


The Wicked Brother, or Winter in the Ironwood

by Lang



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blow Jobs, Cunnilingus, Frottage, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Intersex Loki (Marvel), Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Kidfic, M/M, Masturbation, Past Loki/Grandmaster, Past Thor/Jarnsaxa - Freeform, Past Thor/Sif - Freeform, background politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-08-25 03:28:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 99,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16653421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lang/pseuds/Lang
Summary: When Loki suggested that Jotunheim shelter the Asgardian refugees, he meant to make a bit of mischief, that was all. He meant to humble a certain prideful son of Odin.He did not expect to return to Jotunheim three hundred years later and find the realm buzzing with talk of New Asgard and its wicked king. He did not expect to have completely, inadvertently destroyed Thor's life. He certainly did not expect to be tasked with helping set that life to rights again.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is based in part on Cat Sebastian's _The Ruin of a Rake_ , which I'm convinced is based in part on Georgette Heyer's _Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle._

“New Asgard will be less a kingdom,” Loki told Helblindi, “than a sorry vassal state, a tenant at most.”

Then he had to explain what a tenant was. Helblindi had little concept of rents and tithes. He knew only that all things flowed to him, as he was king of Jotunheim. He did not question how or why, preferring to leave the work of ruling to Loki and Byleistr. 

This made it laughably easy to sell Helblindi on the Asgardian cause. Yes, the Aesir were old enemies. But they were enemies with twelve-score surviving magic users who could teach the Jötunn ice-witches new spells. Enemies whose all-seeing sentry could be forced to devote his gaze to Jotunheim’s interests, where necessary. Enemies whose Valkyrie commander could be tasked with teaching the royal guard to fight properly, instead of merely lumbering about hitting things with rocks. 

“And then there’s Thor,” Loki added. 

“What use is he?” Helblindi said irritably. “One-eyed king of no more than three hundred, without even his hammer to recommend him. You did hear, didn’t you? The hag of a sister broke the hammer.”

Loki, sitting perched on Helblindi’s shoulder, flicked his brother’s ear, sharp nails grazing the blue skin. It was a careless and irritated action, but done only for the show of it. Loki was not irritated. Instead he felt a calm, venomous delight. He had not seen Thor in hundreds of years, had thought of him in that time with nothing but bitterness. And so learning of how Hela had broken the young prince and Asgard in the process had flooded Loki’s veins with the peculiar victory of a satisfied observer. 

And a victor should be allowed to celebrate, in his own way. 

“It is the principle of the thing,” Loki hissed now. “Asgard asks to rebuild in the lands beneath the ice. Our lands beneath the ice—“

“You just claimed we won’t miss them,” Helblindi said accusingly. “That we are not using them, that it is too warm and bright beneath the surface of our realm—“

“So we won’t, so we are not, and so it is,” Loki said, flicking him again. “I tell you — we lose nothing in leasing that land to the Aesir. But for the look of the thing, brother, _they_ must lose. Their king must lose. Do you forget that his father, another one-eyed king, took our Casket? Took me? And for what? The Casket moldered in their vault and went up in flames. They had no use for it. And the less spoken of my time in Asgard, the better. But Odin knew the value of laying claim to such symbols. So too must you. If it is land Thor wants, then you must make Thor pay, brother mine. You will demand, in addition to everything else, that he be your servant for a year and a day. Your thrall. This must be the bargain.”

Not that Loki believed Thor would take such a bargain. Arrogance was Thor’s byword, Loki remembered that well. No, Loki proposed this less because he had any interest in actually striking a deal for the Aesir (it would be sufficient, he thought, if Queen Frigga who had asked this of him only believed he'd tried), and more for the mischief of it. 

Mighty Thor, brought so low that a stupid, lumbering frost giant could demand such a thing of him. The thought made Loki’s blood sing. 

Though he knew Thor would not accept. He supposed that instead the three hundred devastated Asgardian refugees would be turned away, forced to wander, dreaming always of their golden realm. Closed to them. 

As, in the end, it had been closed to Loki. 

“He must pay,” Loki murmured, into the huge blue shell of his brother’s ear. “He must pay, brother mine.”

He did not expect to be here, in any case, when the bargain was proposed and Thor fell to raging over it. Loki was a universe wanderer, the Jötunn ambassador to wherever he pleased. This was the bargain he had struck for himself with Helblindi, who was foolish enough to believe Loki traveled only to sing his praises, and with Byleistr, who was clever enough to know that a faraway Loki was not a Loki in a position to do them damage. So these days Loki had a vague title, a stipend befitting a legitimate prince, and his freedom. In exchange he did not do too much harm when he returned to Jotunheim, and in fact sometimes he even helped. 

He could have done the same for Odin Allfather and Asgard, once. Queen Frigga clearly believed he still could. But Asgard had not wanted him. 

_Well. Let them hang by their own pride then,_ Loki thought to himself. _Let them hang. For Thor, the fool, will not take this bargain._

Thor, Loki knew, was too arrogant and selfish to humble himself so.


	2. The Lands Below

Three hundred years passed. 

Loki did not spend them on Jotunheim. He went to the roots of the world tree, where spells cropped up like little fuzzy-headed weeds. He went to Idunn's garden and stole what he decided was his rightful share of her apples. He even went back to Sakaar, for a time. The Grandmaster’s barbarous realm always welcomed the god of mischief, lies, and stories. 

And, of course, he did his duty as ambassador. 

With Asgard gone, the remaining realms clamored for supremacy. When Vanaheim and Svartalfheim fell to war, Loki made sure to appear in both courts, enflaming the hottest heads in each with well-placed lies about illusory attempts to ally with the frost giants. 

Jotunheim was too weak, rural, and backwards to lead the nine. But that did not mean Loki was interested in seeing a true new Asgard rise, another nation of the self-righteous and powerful lording their so-called honor over lesser beings. No, better to stir the realms into chaos. Let there never be another Asgard. There never _could_ be a place half so grand, anyway. So in a way he was respecting Asgard and her memory, by sowing discord among her potential heirs. 

Byleistr approved, and wrote him to say so periodically. Helblindi did not write, because literacy was not one of his great skills. So it was long after Thor had served his year as Helblindi’s thrall that Loki learned that had indeed come to pass. 

He was taking a well-deserved rest, back on Sakaar again. Though "rest" was perhaps the wrong thing to call it. While sometimes the Grandmaster scarcely noticed his arrival, too busy with a new toy to care if Loki slept late in his guest chambers, picked up new partners in his arenas, and drunkenly composed plays and stories about Loki, this was not one of those times. No sooner had Loki landed on Sakaar this time than a hologram of his old friend popped up in front of him. His blue-rimmed eyes drank Loki in eagerly. 

“Loke,” En Dwi said, rubbing his hands together manically. “I’ve been thinking I missed you, or I would have thought it if I’d gotten around to it. Mmm. Woke up this morning wanting to sink myself into something sweet, anyway. And here you are, so obliging. Come upstairs. We’ll, um, make magic, make stories. Last time you were here, oh boy, did we get your creative juices flowing, remember? Get the old factory churning. Uh, let’s churn, is what I’m saying, ‘cause it’s good to see you.”

Loki was not above taking advantage of such a welcome. Several debauched months followed, very like those months just after Loki had been sent away from Asgard, though now Loki was neither so young nor so insecure. Then, he had been emotionally vulnerable and eager to please. Now, he strove to be coldly composed and demanding. En Dwi did not care either way, not so long as Loki still gave himself over to fun. 

Then the letter came. 

It was methodical and a little dull, like all of Byleistr’s letters. It spoke of relations with the Ice Islands, with the clan of Thrym. Of the great fish harvest. Of the worrying appearance of sun pools, fissures of heat cracking the surface of Jotunheim, more and more every year. Of recent judgments passed by the All-Winter. 

There, in that passage, a brief few lines, some stray details. 

_The case of Jarnsaxa, Pride of the Islands, bringing testimony against King Thor of the Lands Below. Judgment deferred, as the All-Winter seek the counsel of the clan of King Helblindi, who did employ the accused as a servant for a year and a day._

Loki let the paper drop. There, building in the back of his throat, he could feel a wave of delighted, confused hysteria. Surely to Byleistr this latest legal knot was just that — someone else’s knot, though it seemed the All-Winter wished to have a member of the royal family testify about it. But to Loki this quick, bored scribble held untold significance. 

Thor had taken the bargain. Thor had been Helblindi’s thrall. Thor had been _debased._

And Loki had not been there to see it. 

Delight gave way to fury. Snarling, Loki rose from the mess he and En Dwi had made of a great, pillow-stuffed bed (one of many hedonistic stations in Loki’s chambers here), and grasped futilely among a junkheap of toys, intoxicants, lubricants, and other pleasure paraphernalia. He found his leathers crammed onto a shelf full of writhing, sighing tentacles. He pulled them free and then pulled them on. They were, he noted with some annoyance, the black and green and gold leathers, the same colors he’d once worn on Asgard. That was not by design. It seemed only to be an unhappy accident. 

En Dwi wandered in. 

“Oh, that’s covered up for you,” he noted mildly. "That’s, uh, a shame. I have what you might call a generous craving. Well, you should call it generous. It could work out for you. Oh, I could be hours of fun, super duper nice. Just executed exactly three-point-five people, one was already half-dead, so the little bursts of a.m. anxiety, those are good and gone. Nothing makes you relax like a good execution. Wish you could have seen it. Maybe I’ll do one or two more so you can see it — like I said, I’m feeling generous—“

Loki tuned him out. There was little he needed to bring back with him to Jotunheim. He was, after all, a prince there these days, a legitimate one, and so was not denied anything he desired. But he would not leave his knives on Sakaar, nor his cloak. Certain things had sentimental value. He set about rescuing these things from En Dwi’s grabby love toys. Cloak, knives, and maybe his boots, too. He was no longer the half-starved, unwanted bastard the Aesir had so loved to pity. He could afford now to make an entrance wearing proper shoes. 

En Dwi, still babbling, found his way to the paper Loki had dropped. 

“Little brother writing with news, huh? I have a brother, but he never writes. Can you believe that? It, uh, it breaks the heart, it really does. Jarnsaxa, sounds sexy. Thrym, that doesn’t. But it does rhyme with quim, you know I’m fond of that. And hey, this Thor, isn’t that the, uh, what’d you call him, the wicked brother, or something like that, or anyway I figured it was about him, ‘cause you, Lokes, are as subtle as the love screams of a horny Kronan, pardon the comparison—“

He trailed off. Loki had located his cloak, his knives, and some boots. Now Sakaar’s Grandmaster was talking to an empty room. 

-

Byleistr was only too happy to ride with Loki to the realm below the ice realm. 

He was, like Loki, small enough to navigate the Lands Below with no issue. Helblindi was the only legitimate and purely royal son of Laufey, and therefore the only truly giant one. Byleistr had been sired by a Jotun merchant hailing from the clan of the snow-capped peaks, middling gentry of a middling height. This meant that Byleistr stood as tall as two Lokis, which was small but not disgraceful. The disgrace had always been in Laufey’s eldest child. Loki’s sire had been a common pleasure slave from the Ice Islands, and it showed in Loki’s height and comparative slenderness. 

These attributes were rarely assets in Jotunheim. Or rather, they were rarely assets when one was _on_ Jotunheim, on its windy, dark, ice-strewn surface, teeming with ferocious beasts that would happily feast on the small and weak. But below the great ice shelves there was a planet within a planet, massive caverns of iron ore, hot springs and networks of subterranean lakes beneath the frozen surface, great forests of glowing underground mushrooms. 

To the giants, this dense ecosystem was worthless. The heat at Jotunheim’s core made it unlivable for any giant of quality, for giants of quality were large. And a giant’s size was naturally inversely correlated to a giant’s magic stores, as the largest ones burned so much magic keeping their great bodies upright that they had none left over to regulate their internal temperature and withstand the heat. 

Not so for Loki, who was small even by the standards of the smallest giants, and so who brimmed with excess magic all the time. He had always found the Lands Below not only perfectly comfortable, but even pleasant, in their own way. Laufey had never been able to reach him here. This place, a place of dangerous myth to the rest of the giants, had always been for Loki the site of refuge and discovery.

Now, he sketched cooling spells with a finger, wrapping himself in winter against the heat as he and Byleistr rode down to the core of the realm. Their mole-bear steeds sniffed out the way down, scrambling through tunnels of shining rock before emerging into the great caverns of iron ore that Loki had once taken shelter in as a boy. They were larger than he remembered, though still glittering with seams of precious metal that gave off peculiar light, glowing veins snaking through the vast rock walls like painted-on tree limbs. 

“It’s been expanded,” Loki realized. “This cavern. By the Asgardians, perhaps.”

It must have been them. The giants did not come here, but someone, or more likely hundreds of someones, had _worked_ this place, mined it. Here and there, on rocky outcroppings, Loki saw signs of habitation: a coil of rope, an abandoned leather glove too small for a giant.

Byleistr turned in his saddle, looking at Loki as though he was too stupid for words.

"That is why I asked you to come," he said impatiently. "Did you not read my latest?"

Not after that line about Thor. Now Loki remembered that there had been a great many paragraphs left, but those paragraphs he had promptly abandoned on Sakaar.

"Merely confirming what I read," he tried. Byleistr nodded sagely and turned back around. His voice rumbled through the plodding hoof-song of their steeds, every sound amplified by the caverns around them.

"Helblindi will not have these warmongers armed," he said.

_I will not have these warmongers armed,_ he meant, for among Loki's brothers, only Byleistr could be trusted to do the thinking. And sound thinking it was. 

"They take the iron to make weapons," Loki guessed. "We should have expected it, from such a warrior race."

Byleistr shrugged his massive shoulders, tinted green by the golden-metallic light of the caverns. 

"That is my guess," he said. "Queen Frigga gives her word that they will not attack, but what good is the word of an Asgardian? I confess, when you proposed to Helblindi that they come here, I wondered what you were thinking. _I_ could see ahead, to conflict with our old enemies. It surprised me that you did not, when you have always been the cleverest--"

Well, Loki had not believed Asgard would truly settle here. Loki had only been having a little fun. 

"We can take three hundred," he told Byleistr silkily, "or however many there are now."

"Did you invite them here to see them massacred?" Byleistr asked. "A peculiar aim, Loki. Even for you."

There was censure in his tone, but then Byleistr was a diplomat and merchant, and disliked bloodshed. Once, this had made him a target for Laufey's scorn, as Loki had been. The brothers thus had a strange camaraderie borne of being not enough, though Byleistr had always been shielded from the worst by his sire's clan, while Loki had been shielded not at all.

Still, Loki did not see value in arguing. He did not want the Aesir massacred, and he did not want them to gain weapons and power, only he was not entirely sure he wanted them _here_ , despite what he had told Helblindi so long ago. He only knew that he had carelessly set something in motion, in taking Frigga's plea to his brother and seeking to make a great joke of it. He only knew that there was a place inside him where the golden realm of the Aesir, with its golden royal family, had long resided, paining him like a precious jewel lodged in his throat. 

He had not seen Thor in over three hundred years. This did not mean he had not thought of Thor. He thought of Thor too often, always some fancy of coming across that ark of refugees and having them beg again for help, and him naming a reasonable price, a fair price, such as Thor on his knees. But never did the fantasy extend to Thor easily accepting such a thing. The very thought was ludicrous. It was _Thor_.

Now the caverns gave way to a cool, marshy expanse lit by webs of green fungi. The mole-bears sloshed their way through. Above them hung the lesser ocean of Jotunheim, separated from this makeshift swamp by a hard shelf of crystal, casting icy blue light on everything below. Loki tried and failed to imagine three hundred Aesir making this strange crossing. No, perhaps he had to see the result to really believe it. He spurred his mole-bear on, driving it in front of Helblindi's, eager to get to closer to the core.

He knew what he _should_ find. He knew, from a childhood spent hiding from Laufey, that while no sun shone on Jotunheim's surface, no warmth touched the face of the realm, that did not mean that Jotunheim lacked sunlight or warmth. Jotunheim's warmth was buried, that was all. At the center of the realm, far below the surface, there was a second realm, brilliantly-lit by the magic from Jotunheim's core, Jotunheim's soul. That second realm was wild with little creeping beasts and flowers and grains, a pastoral fantasy beyond the reach of the frost. Once, this place had been Loki's — only Loki's. No one else had ventured here.

Now, it was wild pasture no longer. Loki's mole-bear thundered out of the swamp and onto a golden ledge, looking out over an even more golden valley. Then Loki knew this was no joke or trick. The valley was dotted with homes, shining domes spitting out chimney-smoke. The birdsong that had been ever-present in his childhood was muted now, tempered with the bustling calls of wives shouting for their husbands, fathers shouting for their children, layabouts offering songs for a coin. To Loki's left, a great rolling expanse had been converted into farmland. To his right, above the gleaming domes, was a greater structure. It was no palace, not like the one in Asgard had been. But it had a simple grandeur nevertheless that told Loki that this was where he would find Thor, if Thor was to be found.

Someone coughed. Loki nearly fell off his mole-bear in surprise. Before him, a brown-gold pile of metals he had scarcely noticed proved to be very much alive. And it was not metal at all, or at least most of it was not. The armor was dustier and more battered than he remembered, and the helm was gone, but those liquid-gold eyes were the same.

"Prince Loki," Heimdall said politely, with a sage grin that set Loki's teeth on edge. "Welcome. We have been expecting you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Thor!


	3. New Asgard

There were places on Midgard far grander than Thor’s new hall, but sometimes, Loki had to admit uneasily, the where mattered less than the who.

Thor sat on a rough-hewn chair, not a throne, but he sat like a king. This was to be expected, as now he _was_ a king. Still, Loki thought it was somewhat rude of him. Loki was a prince of the realm. Thor was banished below the surface. Loki wore the gold accents that connoted Laufey's royal clan. Thor was shirtless and plastered with sweat, having just come in from tending to Asgard's latest harvest. Loki had royal heritage lines. Thor only had new scars.

But Thor had always been blessed by the Norns, always received what Loki felt was a disproportionate share of good looks. In the past three hundred years, he had taken to wearing an eyepatch. This and his shorn hair should have made him seem ridiculous, but as he now lacked the golden magnificence he'd sported in youth, Loki had no choice but to drink in the sweep of his nose, his jaw, his shoulders, his pectorals. In losing his shine, it seemed Thor only revealed more of the handsome strength that lay beneath. 

Of course he did. Loki did not know whether to be gratified and proud or bitter and furious. Both? Both. All of the above. 

At least he had his wits about him. The same could not be said for Thor, who for all his regalness spent a good few minutes taking awkward swigs from a drinking horn and looking at Loki sideways, like he could not quite believe Loki was here at all.

"Loki," he began, some time around minute three. 

" _Prince_ Loki," Loki corrected sharply.

"Oh, is that how it is?" Thor said. "Make sure you call me King Thor, then."

"Touché," Loki allowed.

Thor snorted, amused. Loki watched the way his throat bobbed, even this somehow appealing.

"I thought you would have come earlier," Thor admitted, after a few moments. "After you helped us find a new home, I thought—"

"Yes," Loki said quickly. "I helped you. Out of the goodness of my heart. How are you liking the new lands I found for you? Do they suit? I confess, I'm not normally one for charity, but for you, brother—"

"Ah, so we are back to brother," Thor murmured into his horn. "We were joking about being nothing more than a prince and king, at least between us. Good. I'm glad. Loki, I've missed you."

The openness of this, the careless affection, caught Loki off-guard. This was not how this was supposed to go. They were supposed to be a prince ascendant and a king brought low. Loki liked that better. Liked it better than Thor looking like he wanted to rise from his makeshift throne and _hug_ Loki. 

"Byleistr is coming," Loki managed, to stave off such an act. "I told Heimdall to wait for him and bring him—"

"Already trying to order Heimdall about. Just the Loki I remember," Thor put in, with a grin.

"Well, see that you treat me as _prince_ when he and Byleistr are here," Loki snapped. "For it's what I am. When we are alone it is one thing—"

One of Thor's eyebrows crept up.

"We are not alone," he said.

He gestured with a broad arm at the servants crowding the edges of the room, tending the fire, sewing, engaging in other such common servant behavior. Loki had not even noticed them. Why should he? Loki was no lackey in Asgard, no whipping boy for Laufey. Not anymore. He straightened up, looked down his nose at Thor.

"I mean, when it does not compromise my position or yours, to forget what we truly are. I do not cast off my royal blood like a coat, Thor. I am brother to the king—"

"Brother to two," Thor said archly. "And I had no idea you had grand notions of what we _truly_ are, Loki. Please, enlighten me."

"I was little more than a servant to you," Loki snapped. "A shadow, forced to always know my place. Let us call it what it was."

Now Thor's eyebrows were positively thunderous. He tossed his horn aside carelessly, with savage grace, and put his hands on his broad thighs, as though it took effort to keep from springing up and cuffing Loki on the jaw.

That, Loki thought faintly, the old Thor would have done with ease, the golden Thor, freely violent and loving by turns. This Thor was not so easy to provoke, but Loki could see how the amused affection in him died swiftly now. He worked that magnificent jaw of his.

"Forgive me," Loki said, after a beat. Not meaning it, only wanting to see what this Thor would make of an apology. Only wanting to test. The Thor he remembered would have locked his fingers around Loki's throat by now. "I'm truly sorry. It seems I'm—emotional. It comes of not seeing you in so long, and of seeing how you and the others work to make a new Asgard of this humble place. So perhaps it is best if we keep some distance between us, King Thor. We are neither of us who we were."

Loki was not. And Thor was perhaps not. Thor had been brought low, brought low by _Loki_ , and Loki itched to ask about it, but it would be too obvious if he asked outright.

"I also," he tried, making sure his voice was small and stammering, "know well the terms Helblindi set you, your majesty, despite my _begging_ him not to demean you. And I confess, I'm ashamed that my blood could have done this. That was why I stayed away. Why I did not come at once to see your New Asgard."

Thor's face softened, buying the lie.

Ah. Not so different from the Thor he remembered, then. Loki swallowed and offered a smile, bitterly satisfied. Bitter because the arrogant prince he'd known had also loved to think Loki was showing his belly. Satisfied because if he was tricking Thor, then there could be no true affection between them. 

-

It was not as easy to manage Queen Frigga.

When Byleistr caught up (some time later, as his mole-bear had been carrying twice the weight of the Loki's and so had only been able to move a great deal more slowly), Thor called for a meal. The servants brought out a low metal table, came bearing the simple, hearty fare these new Asgardians were forced to partake in. One woman, in particular, set a great platter of spiced serpent before the two sons of Laufey, and then, without preamble, extended her arms for the very hug Thor had been so carelessly on the verge of offering Loki.

"Your majesty," Loki stammered. The stammer was real now. He would know her warm beauty anywhere, but he'd never before seen her in a rough leather tunic, her only ornament an iron hairpin twisted in the shape of a tree branch.

"Hush and hug me," instructed the Dowager Queen, and Loki, pathetically grateful for the way Byleistr suddenly pretended he wasn't watching, did just that.

Loki buried his face in the golden-brown fall of her hair. 

"I know you're here to talk about the iron reserves," Queen Frigga said briskly, directing this to Byleistr even as her white hands stroked Loki's hair. "But you will wait until we've had a chance to catch up with Loki, won't you? Then you and I can talk it over, fall to blows, sling barbs at each other, whatever will let you go back to Helblindi with your head high."

"I wasn't aware I had any intentions of coming to blows with you, my lady," Byleistr said, and Loki stifled a laugh at how stiff and unhappy he sounded. Loki did not envy him. Thor might look the part of a king, but of course it was Frigga who handled delicate affairs with the giants. Even a giant would be mortified at the thought of harming or offending Frigga.

Now she pulled back enough to clasp Loki's face with her hands, peering into his red eyes with her blue ones. Belatedly, Loki wondered if it shocked her to see him in his Jotunn form. If it did, she gave no indication of it.

"A long time, you've owed us a visit," she informed him. He felt the stirrings of that guilt her son had been fruitlessly trying to plant in him. He would not feel sorry for slighting Thor, but he had to feel sorry for slighting Frigga. Nothing in Frigga was so arrogant that she delighted in seeing Loki ashamed. Already she was rubbing at the space below his eyes soothingly, as if she knew he was upset with himself. Hers was the only mother's touch Loki had ever received and so now he leaned into it, not caring if Thor and Byleistr watched.

"I was telling Thor," he said to her, "that I hope this land I offered you has been a worthy home—"

Strangely, with Frigga before him, he _did_ hope that. He had not approached Helblindi just to shame Thor, after all. He'd done it because Frigga had asked him to, because he'd known he would have been unable to live with himself if he did not at least try to give some twisted form to his love for her. 

His love for her, he thought, had not ever helped her very much. But he could not deny it. Frigga had taken him, a ragged hostage with no magic beyond winter and ice, and taught him more, cared for him beyond all measure, mothered him into something resembling a person. So his selfish devotion to her burned bright inside him, leaking into even his plans for mischief and strife. 

"Our realm is worthier still now that you are here to share in it with us," Frigga said. "Now sit. Try the serpent. It's Thor's favorite. You know he's always liked snakes."

"Never before as my midday meal," Thor put in. "But we have had to adapt, since coming here."

"Luckily, Thor has been adaptable," Frigga said, approval shining through her tone. Loki felt a prick of his old jealousy catch hold of him. But Frigga, being Frigga, knew to reach out for his hand and grasp it lovingly, and to turn the conversation away from Thor's prowess every now and then. "And you, my love? What have you been up to? Byleistr tells us you have been in the thick of it, dealing with Vanaheim and Svartalfheim."

"Trying my best to end the war between them," Loki said quickly. "Alas, I have been unsuccessful. Despite my attempts to talk them around to peace, I'm sad to report they are falling to ruin."

Thor paused in ladling the serpent into bowls and gave a sound that might have been a growl.

"Is Brunnhilde eating with us?" he demanded of his mother. "She should hear this. She and I have spoken of sending her to help your cousins the Vanir."

"If my cousins do not listen to Loki, then I cannot see how Brunnhilde could convince them," Frigga said, frowning. "In any case, today is the first day of the final week of the month, darling. You know that Brunnhilde is—occupied."

This cryptic pronouncement seemed to make sense to everyone but Loki, who was left to wonder if Brunnhilde was some sort of were-creature that transformed on a monthly basis. For now Thor was looking murderous, Frigga was avoiding Loki's gaze, and Byleistr was nodding the sensible nod of someone who knew perfectly well an unpleasant topic had come up and did not want anyone to think he had anything much to say about it.

"Occupied with what?" Loki asked.

Thor glowered at his spiced serpent. Frigga cleared her throat.

"That is something we should catch up about," she said smoothly.

"I thought I wrote you about it, actually," Byleistr put in. "Maybe I didn't."

"You wrote me about court hearings, the harvest, and Thrym's latest power plays," Loki said. "Never do you tell me a thing about the Asgardians."

"Ah, but I included this," Byleistr said. "I'm quite sure I did."

"Included what?" Loki demanded.

Thor looked at Frigga. Frigga looked at Thor. Byleistr looked at both of them, then at Loki, then at his spiced serpent, then said, "Ah. It's really none of my business."

"What?" Loki demanded.

Amazingly, Thor was looking embarrassed now.

"It's my divorce," he said.

"Your _what_?"

"My divorce," Thor said. "I married a giant. Only for forty years, and now we're divorcing. But there are some differences of opinion with regard to the custody agreement."

"With regard to the _what_?"

Now there came some commotion from outside the hall. After a few seconds of shouting, the great metal doors clanged open and a woman strode in. It took Loki a few moments to realize when he had last seen her: when Frigga had approached him after the fall of Asgard. This was the surviving Valkyrie, the only one Thor's sister had not massacred in her attempts to get to Odin Allfather. 

The Valkyrie was trailed by a shrieking dervish of a giant, only six-foot-nine or so, but enthrallingly lovely nevertheless. The giant pawed at something in the Valkyrie's hands, not stopping his wild screams even when he caught sight of the four royals at the table.

"If you think for an instant I shall let you have him!" yelled the giant. "If you think I will give up the flesh of my flesh to this brute, to this monster—"

"You agreed that Thor was to have the child for the final week of every month," Byleistr put in now. Frigga shot him a grateful look. "Come now, Jarnsaxa. Until the All-Winter finds against him, you must uphold the contract of dissolution that you signed, in your blood, might I add—"

"Tyrant!" shrieked Jarnsaxa. "Demon! Holding the ear of our good king, poisoning it with pro-Asgardian nonsense—"

Jarnsaxa's enchanting crimson eyes caught Loki's. Jarnsaxa seemed to realize something. Without preamble, he stopped pawing at the bundle the Valkyrie held and inserted himself at the table, shoving his way between Thor and Loki and grabbing Byleistr's bowl of serpent for himself, for all the world like he had been invited to the meal.

"Oh, prince Loki," he said breathlessly. "It is you, is it not? The lost eldest prince?"

"He's not lost," Byleistr protested. "By the Norns, he's our sanctioned ambassador to the other realms, it's an official title that brings with it traveling privileges, that's all. We never went and _lost_ him, not this time, anyway—"

"How cool and collected you are, how brave, to come here," crooned Jarnsaxa, ignoring Byleistr, Thor, Frigga, the Valkyrie, and the little bundle. Ignoring everyone, in fact, but Loki. "Oh, prince Loki, tell me you will not believe the Aesir King's lies. Tell me you have not been fooled."

At this point Loki caught sight of Frigga and discovered that the Dowager Queen of New Asgard was rolling her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Loki said politely. "Fooled by what?"

The bundle in the Valkyrie's arms began to wail. Loki scarcely noticed this, however, because by now Jarnsaxa had thrown back his fine gossamer traveling cloak and produced something. A book.

_The Wicked Brother, or Winter in the Ironwood._

Loki began to choke on his spiced serpent.

"It's all here, you see," Jarnsaxa said smugly. "King Thor's evil misdeeds."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "disproportionate share" line was ripped from Cat Sebastian. And if you were wondering when this tragicomedy was going to inch closer to comedy, the answer is with Jarnsaxa, baby.
> 
> Next chapter: a book ruins Thor's life. 
> 
> ~~Yes, I already wrote about a book sort of ruining Thor's life, but this it's different. I promise. For one thing, this time I'm really committing.~~


	4. The Wicked Brother

Worse things had happened to Thor than the publication of _The Wicked Brother_ , but that wasn't saying much. He'd watched his entire kingdom go up in flames. Next to that, what was some anonymous coward's willful destruction of Thor's reputation?

Still, it took great strength of mind not to rip the book from Loki's hands. Because Loki, damn him, was enjoying this.

"Mmmm," he said, turning a page. "Oh dear. Betraying the royal family that offered him shelter? Poisoning the baby prince? Inviting their ancient enemies into the treasure vault? This Angrboda character _is_ a monster."

"It's rude to read at the table, Prince Loki," Thor told him. "Hardly befitting your station."

Loki gave him a withering look.

"Everyone else is gone."

Not everyone. The servants cleared the table still, and Thor was helping them, stacking bowls and spoons as efficiently as any scullery boy. He was king, yes, but here in their modest kingdom they did not stand on ceremony. Loki, however, lounged lazily on the bench that Jarnsaxa and Byleistr had vacated. Byleistr had gone with Frigga to puzzle over the particulars of the Jotunn-Aesir treaty and whether it entitled the Asgardians to Jotunheim's iron reserves. Jarnsaxa had gone after Brunnhilde in order to shriek and fuss over Magni. These days he always insisted on accompanying the child to New Asgard, never mind how Magni had bored him in the days before Jarnsaxa had read _The Wicked Brother._

"Heed the description," Jarnsaxa had hissed before departing, with a baleful look at Thor. He had seemed on the verge of listing the various attributes Thor shared with Angrboda, the vengeful villain of the book. Thor had decided to do the honors for him.

"Blond, muscular, wears a rakishly attractive eyepatch, lives below the surface of Jotunheim," he'd said, counting each trait off on his fingers, as Jarnsaxa shuddered dramatically and Loki's eyes widened a tiny bit, "is responsible for the apocalyptic destruction of his home world—"

That last one rankled. Whoever had written the thing had known precisely how to slide the knife in and twist it. Thor had tasted something bitter then, and broken off, gesturing at himself.

"It's clearly a caricature of me."

"That pasteboard monster is nothing like you," Frigga had put in sternly. 

This was evident to _Thor_ , who, after all, had never murdered babies or plagued innocent Jotunn youths with evil curses, as Angrboda seemed to do on a near-daily basis. But for silly, lovely Jarnsaxa, it was enough to know that every single Jotunn of quality believed Angrboda to be Thor, for Angrboda looked like Thor and spoke like him, and was said to be as arrogant. Angrboda could not possibly have been modeled on anyone else. 

And if Jarnsaxa was not an attentive parent, well. Then neither did he want to be known as one who would permit his baby to be raised by a monster.

"He isn't so _very_ like you," Loki said now, and some of Thor’s rage evaporated. 

Then Loki added, "Angrboda seems much more interesting."

Always a barb with this one. Now Thor did snatch the book from his hands. Loki reacted with a sort of petulant satisfaction, the sudden quirk of his brow suggesting _aha! I knew you were a brute!_

That was an even greater barb. Somehow it seemed to throw up their tangled history between them. 

Thor knew he was not the monster Angrboda was. Indeed, it was easy not to be that monster. He only had to refrain from killing babies and kicking kittens. But he did not know if he was, by now, more than the arrogant, careless failure of a boy Loki had once known. 

That boy had foolishly done his fair share to lose Asgard, to lose his father. That boy who had done his fair share to lose Loki, and to let him be treated as — what was it Loki had said? — a servant. A shadow. 

Thor swallowed, and tossed the book into the great fireplace just behind him. Loki’s eyes followed the gesture, fixating on the burning pages. Good. That meant Loki was not watching his burning face. 

“It was not so bad,” Thor told him. “Working for your brother, Loki. It was not as terrible as you might think.”

Truly, it hadn’t been. King Helblindi was a large, plodding child, with little use for a servant other than to make demands for midnight ice-yak milk and to have someone to casually hit when he couldn’t find his favorite loincloth. Thor liked to think acting as his nursemaid for a year had taught him patience and humility. Certainly it had let him learn the ins and outs of the Jotunn court better than anything else might have. Thor had long been grateful for that, if only for the sake of his own people. 

But he’d never thought to throw his year of service up next to the hundreds of years Loki had spent in Asgard, as Odin’s least-loved war hostage. He felt tired and stupid. The parallel had been right there, likely it was the whole reason Helblindi had demanded such a thing of him in the first place, and yet Thor had been determined not to see it. This whole time, he’d bitterly presumed Loki had stayed away out of cowardice or malice. When in fact Loki had stayed away because he couldn’t bear the thought of Thor suffering as he had suffered. 

“There’s no need to be noble about it,” Loki said, sounding almost angry. He straightened up now and crossed his arms, blue wound on blue. How strange it was to see him colored so, his natural color, for all that Thor had admit he found the result oddly appealing. 

Loki continued. 

“Surely you endured terrible harassment, scorn beyond all measure—“

Some of that, yes. And yet in the year after losing Asgard it had all come to him as nothing more than a minor pain, and no more than his due. 

“—surely you were debased more than you’ve ever known—“

“Hardly,” Thor said. “And if I was, it didn’t matter. I was doing it for Asgard.”

Something in Loki's thin face twitched. Loki probably did not know it twitched — he had always believed himself to be more of an enigma than he was. Still, it made Thor see that this was perhaps too painful a subject for either of them. Loki would persist in thinking Thor suffered as he had, and Thor would persist in knowing the truth and being ill-suited to properly communicate it.

"Enough of this," he decided. "There's someone I want you to meet—"

"Oh yes, we must stop speaking of it simply because _you_ want to," Loki snapped. He really was angry now, and doing little to hide it. Thor's answering exhaustion only deepened.

"It gets us nowhere," he said, with finality. "Dispel your guilt, brother, please—"

But as soon as he said that, he supposed he should not have. The dark spots in Loki's blue cheeks suggested that Thor's once-brother was taking their tangled past and knotting it up even more terribly, that the snarls of Loki's mind might lead him to suppose that Thor wanted to lay rest his _own_ guilt, not Loki's.

As ever, it was his mother that saved him. She and Byleistr returned now and even Loki snapped to attention, rising swiftly at her entrance. 

Though perhaps he was only rising because he meant to leave. Frigga's long-fingered hands chased after him, only just managing to halt his dramatic exit.

"Darling," she said. "A word?"

Thor's mother, Thor recalled now with no small amount of pain, had _always_ hated Odin's decision to humble Jotunheim by humbling Laufey's firstborn. Thor watched how she rubbed now at a spot just below Loki's mouth, and had a vivid memory of those same hands helping Loki set a table, never mind her status in those days as Queen. Waiting for Loki after every dangerous errand, hands twisted with anxiety. Carefully picking at that same mouth she tapped out, trying to pull out bloodied silver thread. 

Now she pulled Loki off into a corner of the hall. Thor was left staring at Byleistr.

"Is it settled, then?" he asked, for lack of anything better to say. 

Before the publication of _The Wicked Brother_ , Thor himself might have negotiated the matter of the iron reserves. Now, it was better if Byleistr could truthfully say that New Asgard's king had not spoken two words to him about the matter. The giants did not trust Thor to tell the truth, not when something so damning had been published about him. Frigga's word held more power these days.

"I believe your mother, that you do not seek war," Byleistr said carefully. "But whether you seek it is hardly the question. The question is whether the All-Winter will tolerate New Asgard taking more from the realm than was explicitly promised to you. In short, whether _they_ trust your intentions."

"Wonderful," Thor ground out. 

Jotunheim's court of law was all-powerful and, it was said, deeply mistrustful of Asgard. And, of course, they had already heard Jarnsaxa declare him a wicked beast whose every action was powered by evil motives. Possibly some of the judges had even read _The Wicked Brother_.

"Perhaps they will be kind enough to schedule this matter on the same day as your custody hearing," Byleistr suggested, in the tones of someone desperately searching for a silver lining.

At Thor's answering glower, he at least had the grace to look embarrassed.

-

The true silver linings in all of this were, of course, Thrud and Magni. And yet when Thor arrived at the royal quarters Magni still persisted in screaming his head off. As for Thrud, she was earnestly holding Jarnsaxa's hands and saying, dulcet-sweet, "Yes, Jarnsaxa, my father _does_ eat Jotunn flesh. And if you stay here another _minute_ , he'll start with your fingers and tear them off with his teeth, then grind down on your knuckle bones to taste your knuckle-bone juice—"

"He will _not_!" Thor roared.

He lunged at her, the better to separate her from a shaking, periwinkle-faced Jarnsaxa. Jarnsaxa screamed. Thrud, hanging lopsidedly out of Thor's arms, gleefully added, "This is how it begins!"

"This is not!" Thor shouted again. He managed to wrest Thrud out of the main room and into a cozy side-room. It was octagon-shaped, dark-paneled to simulate the nights that never came to New Asgard, and hung with glowing lights and colorful tapestries. Frigga used it for weaving, Sif for meditation, and Brunnhilde for day-drinking whenever Jarnsaxa was present. Brunnhilde was in there now. She watched as Thor deposited his daughter in the chair usually reserved for Frigga. 

Thrud, a much smaller, slightly blonder, perhaps infinitely more evil version of her grandmother, only crossed her arms and stared coolly up at Thor.

"If you ate Jarnsaxa, then Magni would have to live with us forever because he wouldn't have anyone but us," Thrud said. 

"Irrefutable logic," said Brunnhilde.

"Thank you," said Thrud.

"Who is _teaching_ her this?" Thor demanded. He thought he knew, but Brunnhilde did not look the least interested in owning up to it. "She's not to read that book!"

"I'll read it someday," Thrud said, with confidence. "Anyway. I hate Jarnsaxa and Magni hates Jarsaxa and mother hates Jarnsaxa and other mother hates Jarnsaxa—"

"I do," said Brunnhilde.

"—and _grandmother_ hates Jarnsaxa—"

"I don't hate anyone, or at least anyone drawing living breath," said Frigga, sweeping into the room for another rescue. Sit was on her heels, holding a now-calm Magni who she passed to Thor without a word. As Frigga's seat was taken, Frigga took Thor's. Sif took her own, next to Brunnhilde. This left nowhere for Thor to sit but on the heap of cushions Thrud usually played in. Thor tried to communicate with a forceful look that Thrud should hop down onto those cushions now, but Thrud was far beyond forceful looks.

"If you don't eat Jarnsaxa, I will," Thrud threatened.

"You aren't large enough to eat Jarnsaxa," Thor countered. He bobbed Magni gently, because Magni was now snuffling and every snuffle seemed to portend another crying fit if he wasn't placated. In response, Magni punched Thor in the pectoral with a chubby blue fist. 

Thrud contemplated the problem of her smallness relative to Jarnsaxa's largeness.

After a moment, she said, "I will begin with Jarnsaxa's smallest pieces and I will move on to his bigger pieces only after I've given myself time to process his smallest pieces. Eventually I will finish him."

"It would take you too much time," Thor growled. "His meat would rot in the meantime."

"Not if you cured it in a vat of salt," Sif suggested, apparently turning traitor. Frigga and Brunnhilde did the same, nodding in tandem like the idea made sense. Brunnhilde was no surprise, but Frigga was. Thor shot her a betrayed glance. In return, she only shrugged and picked up a discarded tapestry that must have displeased her somehow, squinting at it like she wasn't sure how to fix it.

"Not if I cure him in a vat of salt. Thank you, mother," Thrud was saying, meanwhile.

"Where are we going to get salt?" Thor said. 

"That's your job," Thrud returned. "You're the king."

Magni's snuffles became louder. He resumed his punching.

"You're upsetting your brother," Thor tried. 

"He'll be happier once we destroy his other parent," Thrud said. "We'll all be."

As Jarnsaxa could now be heard through the thick wood of the door, shrilly abusing the servants, loudly proclaiming his sworn devotion to Magni, and completely ignoring the fact that Magni had been spirited out of his sight, even Thor couldn't deny this. With a sigh, he locked the door to the outer room, then came back and sank onto the cushions, still bobbing Magni. 

The rage and guilt of this morning was now dispelling. In this room, he was surrounded by friends, lulled by the old hum of his mother as she worked, happily punched by his son, and his only problem was his daughter's unshakeable, bizarre perspective on things. Somehow, this was comforting.

"We don't eat people," he told Thrud sternly.

"We could if we had faith in ourselves," Thrud replied. Her blue gaze was as serene as her grandmother's always was. Thor sighed again, then looked about at his companions. Brunnhilde looked exhausted from the trip to the surface, Sif exhausted from helping in the fields, and his mother pensive. 

"Byleistr tells me Loki has always had the ear of the All-Winter. If Loki testified for you, and perhaps for Asgard—" she said, in between carefully picking apart the strands of her tapestry.

" _Loki_?" Sit said now. "Loki-Loki? He's come to Jotunheim?"

"Loki-Loki is here?" demanded Thrud. "What's he like?"

Sif's tone was suspicious, Thrud's terribly excited. Thor tried to figure out which tone he thought boded more ill, and gave up. Sit knew some things about Loki and Thrud only knew stories of him, and neither knew the things Thor knew, neither understood how disastrous and marvelous Loki had always been for the line of Odin.

"He's weedier and greasier than I thought he'd be," Brunnhilde told Thrud now, as though to dash cold water over Thor's thoughts.

"Did I not ever mention the weediness and the greasiness?" said Sif. "Sorry, love. Shame on me."

"Our reunion was ruinous," Thor told them all. Though it was not so much the reunion that was ruinous, as all the centuries of history that had preceded it, beginning with Loki being plucked from Jotunheim by Odin in the first place. "I doubt he would want to help us with Magni, much less with the iron reserves."

Here, Frigga stopped toying with her tapestry and frowned at him. Next to her, Thrud mirrored her frown.

"Why not?" Thrud demanded.

"Yes, Thor, why not?" said Frigga. "After all, he's already agreed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon took away everything Thor loves, so I guess I've decided we will have none of that and that here he will have a large and cantankerous family that loves him. Barring his frost giant ex, of course. 
> 
> Next chapter: gee, I wonder who wrote that book that's ruined Thor's life?


	5. Haphazard Schemes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter: on the dangers of writing RPF drawerfic with your friends. Loki, a randy bastard, singlehandedly raises the fic's rating. Some Jotunn politics to cap off the afternoon.

He had not destroyed Thor with his little servant trick, had only given Thor a reason to be noble. But apparently he had still destroyed Thor’s life another way, entirely by accident. 

“It’s that horrible, slanderous book,” Frigga had told him, just before he’d left New Asgard. “I think a great many of your countrymen believe it to be a true account of Thor!”

Which was preposterous, the similarities in looks and demeanor notwithstanding. Loki had never meant for Angrboda to _be_ Thor. Loki had only desired an arrogant, handsome model for his main villain, and Thor had been conveniently available. 

“This is fine,” Loki decided, once he was back on the surface. “This works out.” 

He was alone now, in an apartment provided for him in the palace. It was sized for a legitimate royal, full of massive furniture carved of ice. But upon his return from the under-realm, he proceeded to tear every oversized divan to shards with his magic, resize the room, stuff it full of conjured objects of cozier wood, and sink a hole into the center of the floor. This he transformed into a steaming hot bathing pool. This he dove into, feeling temporarily as though it might be a decent idea to drown himself. 

But now he talked himself back from the brink. 

“This is really convenient, come to think of it,” he said aloud. He offered the room a laugh that echoed off of the ice walls. 

After a moment, he frowned. Even the echoes sounded forced. 

The trouble was, while he'd always wanted to bring Thor to his knees, he'd also always wanted it to be by design. There was no pleasure in a victory so accidental. There was even a bitterness in it. How _could_ anyone suppose Thor to be so grandly monstrous? How foolish did they all have to be? 

There came a knock on the door. It was very ill-timed, the scurrying tap of a servant. Loki sank into the water, not even wanting to deign to answer. The creature that entered was a stunted thing, only six-foot-four, and carrying a great tub of the shaved ice that all noble giants took as refreshment. He paused in the center of the room and looked about fearfully, apparently unable to comprehend the changes Loki had made.

"If you don't leave right now," Loki said casually, "I am going to turn that tub of yours into a bilgesnipe."

With a little shriek, the servant scurried away. Only he wasn't a very good servant: he did not leave Loki any shaved ice.

Scowling, Loki rose a bit and danced his fingers over the water. He sketched out a series of whorls that deepened, showing him red and white walls. En Dwi’s face blinked up at him. 

“Hold on, hold on, now I’m seeing two realities. Annoying,” En Dwi said. “Not you. Though you are annoying. Gambling with a camel? Come on. I should—“

“Stall the execution for a moment,” Loki told him, temporarily saving whoever En Dwi was actually speaking to. “I have some questions for you.”

En Dwi squinted at him. 

“Are you in the tub?” he said. He stepped back so that Loki could see him bring his arms up and begin to do a peculiar little dance. “Aaahh, fun times! Let’s put on a show! You for me, then me for you! Holy cats, this is phone sex. Isn't it phone sex, Topaz? So old-fashioned, but it does have, uh, it's charms.”

“Not quite the reason I’m calling,” Loki said. “Before I left, you mentioned something. _The Wicked Brother_."

“Your finest work!” En Dwi said, nodding rapidly. "Loved it. Adored it. The part where he, uh, murders the baby and then seduces the brother and makes the stupid brother think he hasn't murdered the baby? Terrific. A little unfinished, though—"

"It was unfinished," Loki hissed. "It was a fancy! Never supposed to see the light of day—"

"Sucks for you, then," said En Dwi, clasping his hands together in sympathetic camaraderie. "Because I wrote in a little ending of my own. Rocks fall, everyone dies. Classic ending. And then I had it published! Sent it out all over the universe! 'This,' I thought, 'this has that, uh, bodice ripper sex power.' I didn't know what title you wanted so I just used both, but Topaz and I had a lively argument over whether we should call it 'The Evil Blond's Willing Courtesan' or 'Fifty Shades of Betray.' Didn't we, Topaz?"

"'Evil Blond's Willing Sex Slave'," Topaz put in, from somewhere beyond the reaches of Loki's makeshift pool-communicator. Loki practically felt his own face twitch. 

"Uh, _no_ ," said En Dwi, in the meantime. "You know I hate that word. He's not enslaving people, he's offering them uncompensated dubiously consensual seduction—"

Growling, Loki dashed a hand through the water and cut the connection. Now he knew how this had happened, but knowing did not quell his underlying frustration.

Asgard, which had banished him and which he had banished from his heart long ago, survived. On Jotunheim. Thor, so prideful and so far above him and now so righteously humbled, likewise survived. But he was twisted into a villain. It was a muddle, a vile little knot, and somehow every thread in that knot had been woven by Loki himself. This made it _his_ muddle, his to enjoy.

So why did it bring him no satisfaction?

Horribly, he knew why. He could still feel Frigga's fingers in his hair, clasped comfortingly on his cheek. Perhaps Loki was not immune to kindness, perhaps that was the one thing that could still slide its hooks into him and force him to serve whims other than his own. 

_You're respected here,_ Frigga had told him. _They all say you have thrice-faced the All-Winter, and thrice won. So if you could counter all this slander, if _you_ were the royal who came forward to speak on his behalf..._

He had agreed. He had agreed, like a fool, because the promise of being so terribly important, so determinative of Thor's fate, still appealed to him _so_ much.

Of course he had made Angrboda like Thor. He could think of no being with a more powerful hold on him, and villains should all be like that: irresistible sources of self-loathing.

Now, he snuck a hand down beneath the water, tracing his own form until he came to his cock, already stirring. It was as contrary as Loki himself, ever at home in moments of dismay, and just as unable to resist thoughts of Thor. Thor the former, the inspiration for Loki's darkest fantasies, gold and dark in equal measure. Carelessly violent, effortlessly powerful.

 _Remember when I first came to you?_ Loki thought. _Runty. Starved. Practically naked. Sit laughed at me and I snarled at her, and you pinned me by the throat and told me that I was in Asgard now, and that in Asgard I would have to mind my manners._

His cock swelled. He made a fist and tugged himself, wanting the shameful pleasure and wanting it to be over already. When his cunt joined in, giving him that urgent tingling sensation, he let his other hand tend to it, the motions frantic. 

_Remember how you ordered me about—_

_How you laughed at my ice magic—_

_How_ mockingly _you called me brother, because you could see how desperately I wanted to be yours, Asgard's, like you—_

But no. Now his remembrance-fancies stuttered, just as his physical needs became most urgent. Because this Thor, the new Thor, had not seemed mocking in the least. This new Thor ill-fit the pattern Loki expected of him. Something had tempered Thor, had humbled him. Loki tugged at himself, plunged his fingers in deeper, thinking of the man he had met today, the one that would have hugged him, even after everything Loki had done. 

His need crested. He could hear his own piteous whines as he brought himself to completion. This was a poor substitute for sex, thinking of Thor, and yet no sexual encounter that he had had in the last few centuries could compare to it, could leave him as sated and simultaneously desperate. When he came back to himself, breathing hard, he shakily pulled himself from the pool. The great ice-sheet walls reflected a thin, long-legged, blue creature, no longer starving but still too sharp-faced to be classically appealing to anyone. Loki snorted at this.

En Dwi was right. Subtlety was not his strong suit in the least. _The Wicked Brother_ had been written for several reasons, chief among them boredom. And yet it said something that, in his boredom, Loki thought about powerful blonds bringing hapless, blue-skinned Jotunn foundlings to their knees. Graphically. For no other reason than the thrill of it, the thrill of — oh, so many thin blue throats choking on turgid members, so many unwanted little giants mewling as they were violated. 

Now he had to steady himself on his bedpost. His thighs and cunt were tingling again, ready to go _again_. 

"Pathetic," he told himself sternly, because it was. Once, perhaps Thor could have violated him into submission, perhaps Loki would have been so wretched as to let him, perhaps even to ask for it. But that was then. Now, Thor was at Loki's mercy. Thor relied on Loki, Thor was the one throwing himself on Loki's kindness.

"Because you fucked the wrong giant," Loki decided, as he pulled on his leggings. Jarnsaxa of the Ice Islands. Frigga had seemed to believe Jarnsaxa posed a threat, even beyond the threat of Thor losing his own half-breed runt child. _Why_ , Loki could not tell. Jarnsaxa seemed to him to be empty-headed and shrill, nothing more. 

Well. And beautiful, perhaps. Graceful, long limbs all hung with golden jewelry, long platinum hair threaded with emerald and crimson. Loki frowned to think of it, never comfortable with being outdone by anyone. 

Who _was_ this Jarnsaxa, this creature that had somehow managed to ensnare Thor?

-

 

He was to see Jarnsaxa again sooner than he expected, during a visit the following week to Thrym's keep. 

It was a delicate political dance, visiting Thrym. Thrym's clan and Laufey's had ever tossed Jotunheim between them, the realm little more than a bauble for the two largest, most powerful lines of giants to fight over. Arguably Laufey's line — barring aberrations like Loki and Byleistr — tended to be taller, physically stronger. But then Thrym's clan was a little smarter. Thrym himself was no fool. He put little stock in size, and well understood that Helblindi was less his foe than Loki and Byleistr were, that the illegitimate Laufeysons were the ones to contend with. And therefore the ones to watch, to court, to pay flattering attention to where necessary. Loki had an invitation to dine with Thrym within a week of arriving on Jotunheim. 

Thrym's keep was a massive beehive of gemstone-lit caves, each more magnificent than the last, their ice walls studded with chrysoprase. The great giant lounged in the finest cave, his huge body curled on a bed of black moss next to a shining ice table heaped with food. But he rose respectfully on his elbows when Loki entered, baring leagues of razor-sharp golden teeth in a smile.

"Our first prince," he said. "Welcome! Welcome, Loki. I beg the king's pardon for taking you from his side."

Thrym wore only a loincloth, for it was a strangely hot week, but from his loincloth dangled so much gold that the jingling of it almost drowned out his rumbling voice. Loki wore no gold or metals at all — Laufey's line was the line of fur and feathers — and so his answering bow was largely soundless, the rustle of his feathery cloak too quiet to compete with the sounds of all the feasting giants around them.

"Helblindi sends his regards," he told Thrym, largely untruthfully, but, well, Helblindi _would_ have sent regards if he had not been in a snit about Loki failing to spend as much time with him as he liked. 

"I've no doubt you made him do so, and I thank you for it. Our realm is blessed by your and Prince Byleistr's attempts to keep the peace," Thrym said easily, waving Loki to a small, sparkling ice chair by his side. Loki took it. Thrym rearranged himself deliberately, massive body moving by slow increments, until they were positioned well enough to talk between themselves, without the noise of the party interfering.

"It is a long time since we see you here on Jotunheim," he told Loki. "What brings you, son of Laufey?"

Thor. But that was none of Thrym's business. And in any case, if Thrym was so boldly asking, it was because he thought he knew the answer already. Loki took his time butchering a fine side of snow-owl and bringing it to his over-large plate before answering.

"You know of Asgard Below?"

Thrym rumbled his assent, low and neutral despite his scowl of displeasure. Naturally he knew. Loki had already learned that, as Laufey's clan had invited the Asgardians to Jotunheim, Thrym's clan had decided the Asgardians had no business here. According to Byleistr, this had been Thrym's chief political platform for the last three hundred years.

Loki therefore did not elaborate, helping himself to his snow-owl, letting the air fill with the excited chatter of drunken giants. Thrym's scowl deepened.

"They say it was your idea to bring them here, Laufeyson."

"They would. I am ever-blamed for all the kingdom's problems," Loki said. " _You_ know that."

Thrym was old enough to remember how Laufey had turned him out onto the snow-wastes in a fit of pique. How Laufey had made games of this, the royal guard hunting his worthless eldest for sport. 

The great giant brought a great, ring-studded finger to his lips, tapped them thoughtfully.

"You are not friends with the Asgard-king?"

"I do not know what we are," Loki said, savoring the strange honesty of this, even if it was honesty deployed in order to be dishonest. "How can I? I have not seen him in centuries. And yet my brothers call me back, believing that I can reason with him—"

Here he broke off, as though he had said too much. Thrym's eyebrows, studded with gold rings, raised ever-so-slightly. It might have been a subtle tell on a smaller being. 

"Well, but he does not threaten our realm," Loki said hastily. "Not in the least. Indeed, Asgard has little relevance and is of _terribly_ minor importance these days, Lord Thrym—"

"The fate of the Ironwood is minor to you, Laufeyson?"

Loki blinked at him. 

"Ironwood?"

How strange to hear the term spoken outside of his own head. 

Thrym seized a haunch of snow owl with a massive hand and munched on it thoughtfully for a few minutes.

"This is what they call the richest seams of the Land Below now," he told Loki. "Places that were once _your_ haunts, Laufeyson. Places of myth, places where they say Ymir's very spirit lives. The Ironwood. It comes from a book, which describes the way iron carves trees into the stone beneath our realm. I am too large to descend to that place, but I am told the description is apt. Apt, too, is the description of the Asgard-king."

"Ah, Helblindi has also read that," Loki said, waving him off. This statement was laughable, though, so he amended it. "Had it read to him."

"And now he worries about the rats planning war beneath our realm, three hundred years too late," Thrym said, mouth curving into a smile.

"Hardly. Helblindi is like you, and knows well that the under-realm is beneath his notice," Loki said. "Indeed, only we small ones ever had any use for it. I wonder at his worry and at yours, Lord Thrym. Why fear the loss of a place you never much used?"

Thrym's smile deepened, catching how Loki said two contradictory things at once: that Helblindi worried, and that Helblindi did not. Loki continued as though he himself did not notice the gaffe.

"Granted, it is beautiful. It was my sanctuary once. Golden and warm, fit only for one such as myself—"

"Jarnsaxa has told me the same," Thrym cut in. He stretched his great arms and leaned back, and now Loki caught sight of the smaller giant on his other side. Jarnsaxa still wore ropes of gold and precious gemstones, the better to accentuate his lithe form. He was watching the discussion coyly. Clearly, he had been listening the entire time. Loki was promptly irritated. He had not meant for this conversation to have such a very specific audience.

"You see, Prince Loki?" Jarnsaxa put in, lovely crimson eyes shining. "You see? You attempt to convince yourself that the Asgardians have not taken something of value from us, but even you can see it is not true. They must be making weapons. For, as Thrym has long said, they are warmongers! I wish they had never come—"

"Regretting the birth of your whelp already?" Loki snapped, unable to help himself.

Jarnsaxa's lovely eyes filled with tears.

"Of course not! I die for Magni! But to have a father such as his, a _brute_ — I thought you would understand, Prince Loki! You, who were stolen from us as a child and forced to live among them—"

Loki shared a disbelieving look with Thrym. Though he had feared being sent to Asgard at first, in truth he had not been stolen from anything but Laufey's scorn, abuse, and hatred. Every giant above a certain age knew that. But of course Jarnsaxa was young as well as lovely, and so had his own ideas about the twisted history of Laufey's eldest.

"—I thought you would know firsthand the barbarism of the Aesir, how they plainly seek to dominate and destroy innocent Jotunn flesh!"

"Is that why everyone asks me about Thor?" Loki said. "Why Helblindi and Byleistr seek to have me take him in hand, study him, handle this matter of royal testimony—"

He broke off again. Put a hand to his throat. This was a moment for grand playacting, and so he acted, letting his expression show as much shame as he could muster.

"Forgive me. I have— I have spoken too much—"

"You are the one commanded to testify about Jarnsaxa's child," Thrym rumbled, sounding satisfied. "Aren't you? I had wondered if Byleistr would do such a thing, pawning the responsibility off on you. You are the expert on the Aesir, after all."

"It is a terrible responsibility," Loki choked out. "Imagine! I, who hate attention so much, must go before the All-Winter—"

Jarnsaxa clasped his beautiful hands together.

"Then you're the one who I must plead my case to, Prince Loki? You? Oh, say you will give me a chance!"

"And give Jotunheim a chance," Thrym rumbled. "A chance to impress upon you the dangers of letting these Aesir rats have the iron reserves. No, letting them stay here another minute."

"Please, friends. I am not a judge here—" Loki protested. He did not let his satisfaction show, but instead kept his voice stammering, his gaze the meek and contrite gaze of little Loki the Starving, Loki the Unwanted, Loki who was sacrificed to the Aesir by his own father.

"No, but you could help us sway the All-Winter, could you not?" rumbled Thrym. "You always have before, and famously, I might add. And Imagine. The line of Laufey and the line of Thrym agreeing for once, on the dangers of the Asgardian invasion. You could save this realm from our oldest enemies, Prince Loki."

"Once," Loki said, "my father told me the same thing, Lord Thrym. As well you know. That did not end well for me."

Thrym's massive hand came to rest next to his on the table, palm up, the ancient symbol of an offer of partnership.

"I never agreed with how you were treated, Prince. But the line of Thrym does not seek to please the Aesir at the cost of any Jotunn, no matter how small. If you are to turn your attention to the Asgard-king, to study him, to let him plead his case, then let us do the same. Let us plead our case to you. Give us a chance to befriend you, before he tries the same with his wiles."

" _Please_ ," Jarnsaxa sobbed out. "For my _darling_ Magni."

-

He composed a brief note to Frigga, later, informing her that he had the ear of Thor's enemies, that he was being asked to hear their claims as well as Thor's, but that she was not to believe he would put much stock in any nonsense they told him. 

Perhaps she could send Thor to the surface for a bit, though. After all, if Loki was to be dining regularly with Thrym and Jarnsaxa, if he was to be hearing their side of things— well. Then he would naturally offer Thor the chance to plead his case as well. It was the least he could do, for an old friend he loved as a brother.

"You're making yourself indispensable to both sides," murmured Byleistr, who had come to the palace to dine with his brothers, and who had somehow crept up behind Loki's chair very quietly. Loki hurriedly covered his paper with an arm, and whipped his head around so fast he smacked Byleistr with his hair.

"Do you object?" he asked silkily. 

Byleistr shrugged. His mouth, thin as Loki's, was an unreadable line. 

"You might show Thor the ins and outs of the All-Winter," he suggested. "He has never appeared there before. And whatever your scheme is, Loki, it seems to hinge on you convincing _them_ , in case you hadn't noticed. While you've had no trouble with that in the past, they are mercurial, you know."

"I well know," Loki said, annoyed that Byleistr thought to tell him what he was about.

But the truth was, like all his schemes, this one was being constructed rather haphazardly in real time. Byleistr regarded him for a long, slow moment like he well knew this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does the Loki of this universe ever _really_ know what he's doing? Doubtful. Possible, but doubtful. Still, if he can make people think he does, that's probably good enough for him.
> 
> Next chapter: Thor gets lured up to the surface! He brings his kid along. It's not exactly the first date Loki was hoping for.


	6. A Thrud

So Loki secured Thor’s attendance on him. And set a time to visit the All-Winter, so that he, ever a helpful friend to Thor and Asgard, could help Thor familiarize himself with the rambling route to the law court. 

Thor did not come alone. He met Loki at the base of the Snaer, the mountain atop which the All-Winter sat, accompanied by a tiny thing, a thing all balled into woolens and furs. It had Frigga’s piercing gaze, an iron raven with mechanical moving wings, and a fat, straw-colored braid poking out of one side of its head. 

“And this is?” Loki said. 

There was no sun on the surface of Jotunheim, only cool moonlight, but Thor’s smile could have fooled anyone into thinking the opposite, so brightly did it now shine. 

“This is Thrud.”

He shoved the little thing at Loki. The braid bobbed. Some of the furs became tangled, or perhaps some of the little limbs, and the Thrud nearly fell in the snow before Thor amiably leaned down and righted it.

“And what is a Thrud?” Loki tried. 

“Me!” said the Thrud, pointing at herself. 

“And you are?” Loki tried again. 

"My daughter, of course!" Thor said. He lifted the squealing Thrud into his arms and tossed her a few times, making her shriek.

"You're a father of two?" Loki said, aghast. There were no howling winds today, as Jotunheim seemed to be in a strangely warm period for Jotunheim. So he couldn't even suppose he hadn't heard right. "You had _two_ children with Jarnsaxa?"

One child he could forgive, but two seemed to suggest that Thor had been with Jarnsaxa for longer than the few minutes needed to build to a halfway-decent orgasm. This, Loki felt, was unforgivable.

"No. Her mother is Sif. I was married twice."

Even more unforgivable. Centuries, Loki had spent assuming none could ever truly have the golden prince of Asgard. And all the while, Thor had been knocking about, apparently marrying just about anybody. 

"Charming. I'm sure Thrud has heard about all my best traits, then."

"You're horrible," Thrud informed Loki, sealing their certain enmity. She was now clambering around on her father's broad back like a sleet-monkey. She beamed at Loki, for some stupid reason.

"Thrud!" Thor said. He began trying to get her down from his back, something which was at least enjoyable to watch because Thrud seemed to know exactly how to make this process intensely difficult for him. 

"Would you ever eat people?" Thrud asked, between snarling at her father with her teeth and hitting Thor in the ear with her raven.

"If they annoyed me terribly," Loki told her, baring his teeth back. Thor managed to look disappointed in him as well as Thrud.

"Your Uncle Loki is a famous jokester," he told Thrud. "Stop _doing_ that! We had such fun, back in the day. Thrud! No, Thrud. I'm _serious_. He was always pranking, causing such tremendous — Thrud! — tremendous mischief—"

"That's me," Loki said, examining his nails. "Such japes. One time he mistook me for a beloved pet, and in response I stabbed him."

"He won't let me have a knife," Thrud complained.

"That's probably my fault," Loki said.

Eventually Thor got her down and, in stern tones, set her to marching up the Snaer. She was surprisingly fast for a creature with such short legs. Still, Loki felt that her presence was not strictly necessary and made that known.

"Tradition dictates that we must approach the All-Winter with no magic," he told Thor conversationally. "For a full-sized giant, it takes about five minutes to get up the mountain. For us, it should be closer to an hour. But since you've brought your child, we might well be climbing for three whole days."

"She's not made of paper, Loki," Thor said, waving Loki off with a hand wrapped in furs. Loki supposed it was rather nice that, despite it being unseasonably hot for a frost giant, it was still too cold on the surface for Thor not to bundle up. This at least demonstrated that Thor had weaknesses. Weaknesses beyond a stupid propensity to spread his seed practically anywhere. 

"She is my daughter, and surprisingly hardy. And I would have her know the court which will decide our family's fate."

"So if they barred you from your other child, you would obey?" Loki said.

Thor's mouth thinned. He said nothing.

Ah. Of course he wouldn't. This was _Thor_. Loki could not imagine Thor not forcing his way, and likely Thor could not imagine it either. 

"And these iron reserves?" Loki offered. "Why do you want those, anyway?"

He was genuinely curious. For his part, he believed Thrym. The Aesir were warriors. They couldn't want iron solely for hairpins and children's toys. They wanted it for weapons and war. 

He enjoyed daring Thor to admit it.

Up ahead, Thrud chose this moment to tumble over her own legs and fall into the snow again, thus proving that children were terribly designed and certain to be a handicap on any outing.

"Come back to New Asgard and maybe I will show you," Thor said, and sped up his gait in order to pull his daughter out of a snowdrift.

-

Within a half hour, Loki decided that it was a shame he and Thrud were certain enemies, as her chief interests seemed to be inconveniencing her father and demanding to be given knives, two traits which, really, she and Loki had in common. He said as much.

"Enemies?" Thor said, sounding choked. They were a little less than halfway up the mountain now. They would have made it farther, but Thrud had decided to slow them down by hopping, rather than walking, part of the way.

"Can we be enemies?" she asked Loki, sounding bizarrely hopeful. She waved her raven at him for no reason Loki could discern.

"You already think I'm horrible," Loki told her with a shrug.

"Yes, but I like your kind of horrible," said Thrud. She beamed at him again. Now Loki realized that by beaming she meant to communicate the normal sort of thing that people communicated when they smiled at you — that they enjoyed your presence.

Loki blinked at her.

"You have absolutely no idea what my kind of horrible is," he said, shocked into honesty.

Thrud threw her chubby hands up and rolled her eyes to the heavens, shaking her raven at the star-strewn sky.

"Stuff and more stuff," she said, rather cryptically. "Can I go ahead?"

"Not too far ahead," Thor cautioned.

"Stuff," Thrud said again. This seemed to be a curse in the Thrud-language.

She skipped ahead. Thor watched her, looking fond. 

"This is a creature you would present to the All-Winter," Loki managed, as they started after her. His voice was faint, as he was still processing the shock of Thor having a daughter so cheerfully foolish. Then again, perhaps that was the only sort of child Thor could have. 

"I wanted her to meet you," Thor admitted. "Though I wasn't expecting her to be so shy around you."

"That's her being _shy_?"

Thor nodded ruefully. Then he added, "And, truly, I do want her to see the All-Winter for herself. She should know the ins and outs of the law courts. My father never shielded me from the workings of the nine realms, not even if it meant taking me on the battlefield."

Loki felt how his own mouth thinned in response, how a hate as cold as winter seemed to seep into his very bones.

"No, your father did not put much stock in the safety of children, it is true."

Loki, to be the one to take a ransom to a band of angry elves. Loki, to steal a skein of fine gold that contained great magic. Loki to risk his neck on byways more secret than the Bifrost, Loki to eat living flame and scorch his throat to guarantee Odin victory, Loki to very literally risk his neck with the dwarves, Loki to fetch that blasted, misbegotten _hammer_ , never mind the consequences to _Loki_ —

They had stopped walking, Loki realized. Or he had stopped and Thor had stopped slightly after, for evidently Loki's fury was written on his face.

"Loki," Thor said. "I am sorry. I regret what was done to you. I have _always_ regretted it."

"How very little that helps," Loki said, for it was true. He'd long fantasized about Thor's apology, but actually receiving it was hollow and cold. What was there for Thor to regret? Had Thor not laughed at how eagerly Loki had always played his part, how desperate Loki had been to be accepted into Odin's household? For Loki had consented to every task set to him, had willingly abased himself, rather than be sent back to Jotunheim.

And then Odin had banished from Asgard anyway.

Thor gently took him by the arm and prodded him forward. Loki went, scarcely able to bear the touch, the way it conflicted with his memories of Thor and of Asgard. But Odin was dead, Asgard fallen, and Thor was, for now, little more than a fur-covered pillar with snowflakes in his lashes and melting on the leather of his eyepatch. 

"We must go on," Thor said, still gentle. "I cannot let Thrud go too far on her own."

Loki supposed that was meant to change the subject and was nearly grateful, even, but then Thor went on.

"Mother believes you will stand before the All-Winter and speak on our behalf. I do not, Loki. I would not demand that you do me or Asgard such a favor, not after what you suffered. I think it is right that you want also to hear Jarnsaxa's side, and that of the other giants. I only ask that you let me show you my side, in turn. And that you — that you not believe what you read in that book."

Loki had to bite back a laugh, even amid his anger and dismay. The book? Oh, right. That stupid, silly little book.

"That book is the rankest nonsense," he told Thor, meaning it. He supposed Thor had read it, and wasn't that strange? Thor reading his twisted fantasies of Thor. Among other things. _The Wicked Brother_ had been penned less for the sake of coherence, and more to work through just about everything in Loki's life. A part of Loki now regretted that the damn thing had ever managed to see the light of day.

Although he regretted it less when he caught the way Thor smiled at him. It was a beaming, the same as his daughter, an all-powerful lightness that Loki wanted to both beg for and hide from. 

"It's a relief to hear you say so," Thor said. "To hear one giant say so."

Then he looked at Loki slyly, handsome mouth quirking again at the corners, and added, with a poke at Loki's side that Loki could feel even through his feather-cloak, "Though it is hard to think of you as a giant, brother."

Evidently they were back to a Thor Loki knew.

"Ha. Ha," Loki said. "I am small. A riotous observation."

"It's not that," Thor said, still smiling. "You are _you_. I dreamt of you coming back here, of seeing you again, and I wondered what you would be like. Blue, lined, perhaps even be-horned. I wondered if you would be different, Loki. But you are not any less the Loki I knew and loved. Bluer, yes. But it suits you."

Loki did not know what to do with this. Compliments from Thor. He'd dreamed of them. But he dreamed of all kinds of ridiculous things that ought not to come true.

"Thank you," he said stiffly. "I'm...flattered, I suppose."

Thor had taken his poking hand and directed it back to holding Loki's arm, and now it was all Loki could feel. He wondered if stabbing Thor would perhaps get him to let go, but he did not have time to truly consider the plan. Thrud was shrieking up ahead, and Thor snapped to attention.

"Thrud!" he cried, and raced off after his (entirely unsupervised, which was Thor's fault) daughter. Loki followed, more out of curiosity than anything else.

The child had all the luck of the line of Odin, and was entirely fine. She kneeled at the edge of a sun pool, its terrible warmth bathing her white little face gold as her hair. She'd at least had the sense to take off some of her furs. Thor, dropping to his knees before her and checking her over for injuries, was not so sensible, and so was drenched in sweat in seconds.

Loki, thanking his natural winter magic for how it shielded him from any extremes of temperature, crouched on Thrud's other side.

"It's bubbling horribly," Thrud informed him. "The whole realm's bubbling up. The core is eating up the upper world."

"It's only a sun pool," Loki corrected. Though he supposed Thrud's description was not wrong, either. The surface of Jotunheim was frigid and snowy. Its core was molten, warmth and light. And sometimes the core fought its way dangerously to the surface, the burning heat at the planet's center bobbing up through strange channels to form chasms in the ground. These pockets were deadly for giants too large to modulate their temperature, promising instant heat-stroke. Byleistr found them particularly concerning, and had decreed that any sun pools discovered were to be sealed up with ice.

But Loki had always been fond of the pools and the chaos they generated. They were different from the rest of Jotunheim. Perversely hot, dangerously lovely. 

Now he touched one black-nailed finger to the golden waters and directed a series of ripples straight to the center, where the heat collected and formed a brilliant little star. Thrud made a squealing _oooooh_ sound that drowned out whatever words of warning Thor was making.

"Do you know what I think the heat wants?" Loki whispered to her, too low for Thor to hear. "I think that it fights its way up in the hope of overpowering us all, hating us for trapping it in the core. And that, if enough of it forced its way up, it would make the surface of Jotunheim like the under-realm. Bright. Warm. Jotunheim would gain the light that so many of the other realms have."

Of course, if that ever happened, then many of the giants would die. Everything required a bargain of some sort.

Thrud stared up at him now, solemn and impressed. Loki wondered if she knew what caused the light and warmth to fight its way up, to form sun pools. He assumed Thor had to know by now. He'd had three hundred years to explore the core, after all. Still, rather than state the obvious and upset the child (who, after all, so liked him and so sweetly wanted to be his enemy), Loki muttered a spell and banked the whole pool in ice. 

Thrud was left shivering, Thor briskly moving to wrap her back up again. Loki rose.

"Thrud, my dear, your father will carry you the rest of the way," he decided. "It will be faster and safer."

Thor grunted his agreement, and Thrud, amazingly, did not argue at all. After that, they reached the All-Winter in record time, arriving at the great ice temple that housed Drifa, Fannlaug, and Groke, the judges of Jotunheim, the very first children of Ymir. 

They slumbered, as they always did between cases, with their huge, gnarled bodies encased in the mountain beneath the court. Their great grey heads rose from the ice floor and spat frigid breath out onto the temple, frightening Thrud. Thor, for his part, tucked her gently behind him, as though the All-Winter might wake and eat them. Loki suppressed a smile at that. 

The All-Winter had not had the power to devour anything for centuries.

He helped Thor find a clerk. The seven-foot giant, a low-caste lawyer, scuttled forward at Loki's shrill call to attend the royal house. He took Thor's request to schedule his custody hearing and the hearing on the iron reserves on the same day. Another clerk pointed out the ice cage reserved for defendants and taught Thor the proper forms of address for the great judges. Loki, for his part, pulled Thrud into the corner and showed her the empty plinth.

He could not resist.

"That," Loki told her solemnly, "is where the Casket of Ancient Winters once rested. The Casket which once held the All-Winter's magic, and which made them great as any Aesir gods. But it was destroyed along with Asgard."

"I wondered," was all Thrud said, blinking at the plinth. "Terrible. That's all very terrible."

"Yes," Loki agreed. "Terrible."

"But I think you like terrible," Thrud decided.

Loki revised his opinion of her slightly. Thor, it seemed, had produced an astute enough child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: on the stupidest hunt in the entire world (frost giant customs not being exactly sensible), Thor makes some moves.


	7. The Hunting of the Snorli

Thor did not know if he had managed to stem Loki’s guilt, if he had somehow pointed them to something closer to peace, but after the climb to the All-Winter things between them were easier. 

"It is as I said it would be. You only needed to get to know each other again," his mother said gently.

"Does anyone ever really need to know Loki?" Sif said, at that.

"I don't know. He's convinced Thrym to invite Thor to a Snorli-Hunt," said Brunnhilde. "That's a nice perk."

She would think so, as the blood of the Snorli had famously intoxicating properties. She promptly invited herself along, not that Thor would not have invited her anyway. He could not, he knew, expect to be safe alone in the court of Thrym, sworn enemy of the Aesir, though to be invited was a sign that _The Wicked Brother_ had not entirely destroyed Thor's reputation. Still, for Loki to suggest Thor attend the hunt made Sif rightfully suspicious.

It might have made Thor more suspicious, if Loki had not also invited him and Thrud to the palace grounds to watch Helblindi's guard train. If Loki had not come along the last time the Aesir had to fetch Magni from Jarnsaxa, and distracted the other giant with intense talk of the Ice Islands. It would be like Loki to lull him into complacency, just as Sif said. And yet Thor did not want to believe that this was what Loki was doing. His once-brother had little practical reason to enflame Jotunheim's highest court against Thor and Asgard. It would only reflect poorly on Loki, after all. Loki was the mechanism that had given the Aesir their new Asgard here on Jotunheim, and a part of Thor could not, would not believe that Loki would not support them now. 

"One word," Sif said. "Revenge."

"If he wanted revenge, he'd only need to tell people that _The Wicked Brother_ is true. They'd believe him."

Sif frowned. "What makes you think he _isn't_ telling them that?"

Thor had no answer to that. She would get her answer at the hunt, he supposed. They all would. Thrym had more reason than most to want Thor to be an uncivilized, vicious brute, and an enemy to all the Jotnar. If Loki was indeed against Thor, was indeed helping spread slander, Thor had no doubt Thrym would gleefully make this known to all.

But Loki seemed more harassed than slanderous, when he met them at the topside entrance to the Ironwood. The reason for this was clear from the moment Thor and his two closest friends emerged from the caverns. Loki was not alone. He rode a jittery black mole-bear that clambered around a procession of its fellows, all of which were bearing a great litter. From within the depths of the litter, Loki's youngest brother glared out, his huge crimson eye petulant.

"King Helblindi," Thor said, startled.

"Asgard-king," Helblindi offered back. "Thor One-Eye. My brother, he would leave me at home for the hunt."

"I would leave you where you're least likely to be assassinated," Loki hissed.

Helblindi's laugh was a deep, cavernous thing, scaring birds from the trees and pushing snow off the branches of nearby bushes. 

"I am the purest and largest giant on Jotunheim," he boasted. "So big because I am so full of winter. Spears cannot fell me. To kill me, you would need vats and vats of poison."

"Yes, unluckily for the rest of us," Loki snapped. "It's on your head, then, brother, when Byleistr learns you have snuck out after me."

"Snuck?" said Brunnhilde, surveying the great caravan which bore Helblindi. "This is how he sneaks?"

"Little Valkyrie, who trained my men," Helblindi said to her. "Powerful Valkyrie, beautiful Valkyrie. And her wife, great and strong. Ride with me. Tell me of the days in which you crushed men's skulls together, and I will fall into a sleep and dream lovely bloody dreams before the hunt."

Neither Sif nor Brunnhilde seemed enthused by the prospect of this, but Loki said, "You might as well. I had hoped to bring mole-bears for all of us, but as you can see, he's taken them all for himself. Thor will ride with me."

This seemed to settle it. Thor pulled himself up behind Loki, fisting one hand in the steed's loose, velvety coat, and grasping Loki with the other. It must have seemed hot today to Loki, for he wore only a thin tunic and leggings. Thor could feel the slightly raised lines of his skin beneath the tunic. 

"Stop tracing me," Loki muttered over his shoulder, as they set out. He had long black feathers hanging from his ears. They tickled Thor's nose.

"Accessorize for the hunt, did you?" Thor offered. 

Loki made an inelegant noise.

"Call it a concession to Thrym's way of life," he said. "He'll be decked out. He's famously vain."

If this vanity was what had caused Loki to wash his dark hair, leaving it soft and smooth beneath Thor's cheek, and to look handsome and hale, richly cerulean-skinned instead of muted blue, then Thor was not sure he hated it. The Loki Thor had known in Asgard had been, as Brunnhilde had said, weedy. Unwanted, unkempt. Thinking of him sent a lance of pain through Thor. 

Thor now had over three hundred people to care for and no care to spare for Loki, if he looked at this practically. But he was relieved to see _Loki_ care for Loki, for once. 

"It suits you," he decided. "You look striking, brother."

Loki stiffened a little. Possibly Thor needed to loosen his grip. He did so.

"Did news of the new hearing date reach you?" Loki said, after a few moments.

Thor nodded into his hair.

"Three weeks from now. The seventh day of the month of grey sleet."

"Yes," Loki said. 

There was no need to discuss it. They'd both been apprised of the need to appear before the All-Winter on that date, as Loki was the prized royal witness and Thor was the defendant. 

"I will testify as I see fit," Loki told him warningly. "Perhaps not as you wish me to."

"I know," Thor said. "I will simply have to convince you that my causes are just, brother."

He could do this with Magni, he felt, for Loki had eyes and could see that Jarnsaxa was not much of a parent. But he still did not know how much to say about the iron reserves, still did not know how to put into words New Asgard's aims. No. The _reasons_ for New Asgard's aims. The path which had brought them all to Jotunheim was paved by Thor's failures, and any attempts Thor might make to discuss this tasted like ash in his mouth.

"We're not plotting war," Thor managed. "Of this you have my word."

The sound Loki offered back was decidedly unconvinced. This frustrated Thor. 

Brunnhilde, who had once exiled herself from Asgard and only returned with a small band of Valkyries to defend the throne from Hela, had told him of Asgard's imperial past. Of his father's penchant for setting colonies on other realms, and using the threat of force, hostage-taking, and strategic murder to expand those colonies until he ousted the original rulers.

_Well, most places were weak, and fell when he prodded at them,_ she'd told Thor, after the fall of Asgard. _Midgard, I could see us having no problem taking over—_

_I do not_ want _to take over Midgard_ , Thor had said, heartsick at the very thought, at how neatly it encapsulated the very core of Hela's ideology, Odin's ideology. 

But then his mother had spoken.

_What about Jotunheim?_

Here, they were little more than a vassal state. And yet to be conquerors instead was not what Thor wanted for New Asgard at all. Thor did not want a world where they bent the other realms, free realms, to their whims. Thor did not want a world where they forced innocents to serve them, as Loki had been forced to.

His arms tightened around Loki, almost on instinct. It was not even this Loki he meant to hold like this, but a younger, more vulnerable one. Thor suddenly wished he had not been so foolish when they'd both been young, not been so convinced of Odin, so blind to how Loki had been treated.

"Stop squeezing me," snapped the Loki of the present.

Thor stopped squeezing him. 

They were now coming upon a clearing in a silvery, snowcapped forest, their mole-bear speeding past encampments of giants. Here and there Thor caught sight of pennants for the giants of the oceans, the giants of the snow-waste clan. At the center of the clearing was a brilliant green standard decked with three blood-red slashes. Thrym's pennant.

It was hard to miss Thrym, who proved very large and indeed vain. Larger giants generally wore very little, no more than a loincloth, as they were more susceptible to heat than smaller giants. Thrym's loincloth was pure gold, hung with innumerable chains of gold, and every other inch of him besides pierced or painted in gold. 

Thor supposed he was handsome, if you liked large blue pincushions. It was difficult to admire Thrym, however, given the headache Thor was fast developing now that he caught a glimpse of the giant at Thrym's side.

Jarnsaxa. Endless lovely platinum braids, kohl-rimmed eyes, and more square feet of golden jewelry than Thrym, even, which was saying something, as Thrym was by far the larger giant. It was like a dwarf market stall had exploded and the explosion was now giving Thor the stink-eye from several feet away. Jarnsaxa was seated not on a sturdy mole-bear, but on a graceful silver swan. He brought the swan swooping down to Loki and Thor.

"Hello, Jarnsaxa," Thor said, keeping his tone civil. 

Jarnsaxa ignored him.

"Oh, my _prince_ ," he cooed, pinning his gaze on Loki instead. His perfume wafted down to Thor and Loki, the cool breezes of the sea catching them in the face. "How _delightful_ to see you, Prince Loki. Do say you will ride with me."

Then, with no acknowledgment of Thor beyond a rude little sniff, Jarnsaxa and his swan fluttered back to the center of the clearing.

_Showoff_ , Thor thought.

"Showoff," Loki muttered. Thor did not miss how now his feather cloak appeared out of thin air and covered him, adding some grandeur to his apparel, which was admittedly rather lackluster compared to Jarnsaxa's.

Thrym seemed as if he would follow Jarnsaxa and greet them, but he was derailed from this as behind them, Helblindi's great litter arrived. The king slowly rose from it, while Sif and Brunnhilde likewise scrambled out.

"Er," said Thrym.

Like Helblindi, he had a voice that scared birds from the trees. Indeed, the two giants were almost of a height, and around them silence spread out in ripples, as the other giants beheld the two tallest, most purely noble beings on Jotunheim, true heirs to the winter, sizing each other up. 

"Your king," Helblindi rumbled now, "commands you to let me join the hunt."

Loki hissed something at him.

"And forgives you for your failure to invite me," Helblindi repeated obediently. 

Thor, who had fluffed Helblindi's massive pillows and brought him his midnight yak-milk for a year, knew well that was only Helblindi's way, this combination of clamorous impulse and surprising tractability. But it still set all the other giants to whispering among themselves. 

"Doesn't ask where he can just demand, does he?" Brunnhilde muttered, now leaning on Loki's saddlebags.

"Why should he merely ask?" Loki snapped. "He is a king."

"Thrym doesn't look to pleased to be reminded of that, though," Brunnhilde said.

This was true. Their host's smile was more of a sinister grimace, Thrym's golden teeth shining too sharp in the moonlight. But after a moment, Thrym threw back his head and laughed.

"Of course," he said. He gave a slow, deliberate bow to Helblindi. Then, a slow, deliberate bow to Thor.

"How lucky we are today," Thrym said, his deep voice suddenly strangely silky. "To have not one but two kings before us, two kings alike in dignity and honor. Come, let us cheer to that!"

A good many giants cheered, Helblindi among them. He did not seem to catch the insult, did not seem to realize that Thrym had just compared him to Thor, who Thrym publicly derided as a menace. 

Thor did catch the insult. Thrym had just compared Thor to Thrym's own greatest enemy, a giant Thrym routinely called honorless. Thor felt himself move again without thinking, swing down from the mole-bear, suddenly furious and intent on putting Thrym in his place. 

It was not only Sif and Brunnhilde who held him back, but Loki too.

"If you hit him," Loki murmured. "You will make his day. Peace, now, brother. Let us turn to the hunt."

-

Thrym's heralds gave everyone present ten spears apiece, full pots of snow-owl blood, and strict warnings about avoiding any possible sun pools. Then, they unfurled a great banner depicting the Snorli. 

It was a stupendous beast. Six-legged and four-winged. Covered in scales like obsidian dinner plates. Its front teeth would be longer than Thor's arm. Its song was said to be entrancing, its bite deadly, and the hooks on the end of its three tails deadlier still.

Thor's blood sang. This spoke to something in him, something old and childish, that missed the great hunts with Odin rather desperately. He could not wait to track the Snorli, When Loki freed a second mole-bear from Helblindi's abandoned caravan, he held out his hand imperiously for the reins. Most of the giants were large enough that they could chase their extremely fast prey on foot, but Thor, Loki, and their companions would need to borrow the speed of the mole-bears.

Before they clambered on, however, it seemed they would have to mirror the giants, who were now opening their pots of snow owl blood and smearing themselves in it. Thor unscrewed his and took a sniff. He dipped a finger in the viscous, shining pink liquid.

"The trick to hunting the Snorli is to confuse it," Loki explained now. "We want to make it think that wounded prey lurks around every corner. Then it will not know where to go first, and will run in excited circles in its hapless bewilderment. This will make it easier to trap."

"So whoever gets it is just dumb luck?" Sif said. "And you risk it attacking you and trying to eat you because it thinks you're prey. That's remarkably stupid."

Loki fixed her with a look of such cool dislike that it was almost like old times.

"Lady Sif, this is Jotunheim. These are the customs of our oldest and most revered clans. The least you could do is respect them."

Several giants nearby nodded approvingly at this. As for Thor, he thought Sif had a point, but then so did Loki. When Thor had first come here as a servant in the palace, it had shocked him to learn what the nobility of this realm considered acceptable amusements. Tournaments had no rules, barring those designed to favor the largest and noblest. Art was largely nonexistent; Helblindi's royal museum of Jotunheim contained little more than twelve piles of colorful, over-large fish scales, arranged by Helblindi's personal favorite sculptor, Grimi the Fish-Lover. And the noble giants' most popular team sports were Finfar, a game of hitting rocks with smaller rocks; Farfin, a game of hitting rocks with larger rocks; and Finfinfin, a game of hitting other, lesser giants with the largest rocks of all.

Hunting the Snorli could not be worse for them than any of that. Thor gamely began to smear snow owl blood on himself. Sighing, Sif and Brunnhilde followed.

There came the sound of swan wings fluttering nearby.

"Prince Loki," Jarnsaxa breathed out. "Shall I do your back?"

"Do what with my back?" said Loki, bless him.

"Why, apply your owl blood, of course!" Jarnsaxa said.

Here Thor paused in his preparations and snuck a glance at Loki. Loki was looking smug, but not, it seemed, thanks to Jarnsaxa's attention.

"Oh, no, don't be silly," Loki said, with a sideways glance at Sif.

Sif stopped rubbing owl blood on her forearms.

"You're not doing it? We're _all_ doing it," she said dangerously. "Even your royal brother, King Helblindi."

Loki blinked at her innocently.

"Oh, no, Lady Sif. I agree with your earlier assessment, actually. It's silly to paint oneself as prey."

Now Thor and Brunnhilde had to hold Sif back.

-

Ultimately, their party was neither the most effective nor the most harmonious hunting party present, and it was more than the owl blood that made things so sour. Sif and Loki had never liked each other and Brunnhilde, who was not by nature much of a peacekeeper, became preoccupied with keeping them from descending into outright murder.

As for Thor, he was trying to understand just how Jarnsaxa had been added to their group.

"I should feed you to the Snorli when we find it," Sif was telling Loki.

Jarnsaxa made an anguished sound, louder even than the sound of his irritating swan-flapping.

"Oh, prince Loki! Are they all so vicious, these Aesir?"

"No, you dumb tit," said Brunnhilde, rolling her eyes. "Your boyfriend's just a pain in the arse."

"I'm not Jarnsaxa's boyfriend," Loki pointed out. 

"I should _be_ so lucky," cooed Jarnsaxa, batting his long platinum lashes. 

Thor, acting again on impulse, threw his spear. It clipped Jarnsaxa's swan. Jarnsaxa shrieked.

"Sorry," Thor said, not in fact all that sorry. "I thought I saw the Snorli right there, right behind you. It was, you know. Snorli-ing away and all that. But then it left."

He pulled his mole-bear up in front of the others, trying to get away from Jarnsaxa's general Jarnsaxa-ness.

It wasn't just Jarnsaxa's flirting that was getting to him. It was also that all the magically perfumed ocean breezes were making him sneeze, and the swan-flapping was beginning to drum against the sides of Thor's brain in a particularly annoying staccato.

He had married this person. This person with that cloying, awful tone; this person who routinely forgot Magni needed to be fed; this person who happily believed every evil lie about him. Why had he gone and married this person? Was it simply because he'd been susceptible to flattery?

"You are so brave to journey through the Silver Forest with three brigands, especially after that awful Sif tried to trick you into making yourself Snorli-Food," whispered Jarnsaxa.

Flap, flap, flap, went Jarnsaxa's oversized swan. 

There was a swift noise, almost a whir. Jarnsaxa shrieked again. Thor turned in his saddle and caught sight of an unrepentant Sif.

"Sorry," Sif said. "I also thought I saw the Snorli right behind you. But it leaped off, sort of that-a-way. Fast, that Snorli."

"Very fast," Thor put in. "That's what I noticed, too, when I saw it. It's very fast."

"Yes, we definitely both saw it," said Sif.

"We're very good at spotting Snorlis," Thor concluded. "Very sorry, Jarnsaxa. It's just that we can't help but be amazing at this hunt."

If this had been the only other time they threw a spear at Jarnsaxa, perhaps that would have been fine. But over the course of the next hour, Jarnsaxa proceeded to insult Thor's bloodline, insult Sif's bloodline, suggest that Magni would be better off dead than with Thor as a father, suggest that the Aesir generally did not belong anywhere and that the destruction of their planet should have heralded a noble mass suicide sort of thing, suggest that Valkyries were women born of winged horses who copulated with the ugliest of Aesir maidens (Jarnsaxa seemed to genuinely believe this and Brunnhilde found it funny, but it still annoyed Thor and Sif), and cast aspersions on the character of Queen Frigga thanks to her so-called relationship with the giant Byleistr.

At this last one, even Loki's hand twitched towards his spears. But this time Brunnhilde did the honors, from just behind Jarnsaxa, clipping the silver swan in the rear. It gave a hideous little squawk, by now so anxious that it kept trying to fly off above the trees. Thor almost felt bad for the poor flapping beast.

"Sorry," Brunnhilde said. "Now I could swear _I_ saw the Snorli."

"That is nine times you claim to see it, and always just where I am!" Jarnsaxa shrieked, so hysterical that he bobbed in his saddle and smacked the swan with innumerable fine gold chains. The poor creature gave a mournful wail. Jarnsaxa ignored it. "Prince Loki! Surely you can see their plot! Thor seeks to murder me before the All-Winter delivers my innocent babe to my sole custody! You see his barbarism? You see the lengths he will go to to destroy his enemies?"

Unfortunately for Jarnsaxa, Loki was Loki, and enjoyed a good prank. He did not meet anyone's eyes, but merely sighed, very calmly, and began to pick at his black hunting gloves.

"My dear Lord Jarnsaxa, they cannot help it if the Snorli keeps appearing—"

"Have you seen it?" Jarnsaxa demanded. "Have you seen it even once?"

"I can't be sure. I might have," Loki said, shrugging. "It camouflages so well."

"Anyway, everyone knows it's not a real hunt if someone doesn't mistakenly take aim at their hunting partner," Brunnhilde put in now. "So you've been clipped a few times—"

" _Nine_ times! Oh, prince Loki, Thrym only invited him to demonstrate for us how his Aesir savagery must win out—"

Thor frowned. That had been clear from the very first news of the invitation, yes, but it was still not pleasant to have it so baldly said. Particularly when he and his companions had been acting like bawdy youths, and doing, he had to admit, very little to resuscitate his image. 

Though it wasn't like they meant to seriously hurt Jarnsaxa. It was only that Jarnsaxa was the worst. 

But now Jarnsaxa's tirade was cut off by a long trilling song, then a howl, not so far off from the clearing where they stood. The song was enchanting. The howl, familiar. Helblindi generally had two responses to frustration: to yell and to hit things indiscriminately.

"The king!" Loki said. "He has cornered the Snorli. Jarnsaxa, you must go to him!"

"Me?" Jarnsaxa spluttered.

"You have the fastest steed among us," Loki said. "And it would mean ever so much to me if you helped him. Besides, we both know Thrym will not assist him, and who else can I trust to help Helblindi? The bloodthirsty Aesir king?"

"Excuse me?" Sif put in dangerously. 

But Jarnsaxa, smug, drew up the reins of his swan and said, "Of course, my prince."

Then, blessedly, he flapped off into the trees. As his perfume receded, so did Thor's pounding headache. Still, it hurt to hear Loki so casually smear Thor and his people, and Thor could not resist shooting him a dirty look.

"Oh come off," Loki said, unaffected. "I only wanted Jarnsaxa gone."

And at that, even Sif had to admit that they all did. But now Loki was eyeballing Thor in a very significant manner. 

"Thrym," he said, almost casually, "will probably let my brother die, rather than help him take down the Snorli. It would suit his aims, you know. And I imagine Jarnsaxa alone cannot help the king. Actually, I can't imagine a single situation in which Jarnsaxa would be very much help to anyone at all."

"So we all ride," Brunnhilde said, visibly excited at the prospect of finally drawing blood. "They did not sound too far off."

"That's true," Loki said. "That's true, and the beast is no doubt searching for any out, and may sneak off from them, perhaps into this very clearing. No, we should split up. You and Sif should go assist my brother — it would please him so to have your attentions; it always does — and Thor and I should circle the rest of you, to trap the beast if it escapes you."

"Thus conveniently leaving you with Thor," Sif ground out, not sounding too pleased.

It was a very transparent plan, and yet it bothered Thor not at all. Loki was right that Thrym would gladly let Helblindi die, that Jarnsaxa was generally useless, and that they had better odds of trapping the Snorli if they fanned out around it. And if Sif or Brunnhilde were left with Loki, they might well spear him as they had tried to spear Jarnsaxa. And the truth was: he was not in fact opposed to sneaking some time alone with Loki. 

They had seen more of each other lately than they had in the past three hundred years. But it did not feel like enough. 

"It is a solid plan," he told Sif and Brunnhilde now. "We will do it."

"Of course we will," Sif forced out, plainly disgusted. Her expression as she rode away promised Loki certain death if any harm came to Thor, but Loki only preened until she and Brunnhilde were out of sight beyond the silvery thickets.

Then his coy satisfaction fell away entirely. 

"What is wrong with you?" he demanded. Thor watched his blue hands dance, coiling and uncoiling the reins of his mole-bear for apparently no reason.

"What do you mean?" Thor said.

"That worthless little twit has insulted you twelve times or more—"

"Ah," Thor said. "Yes. The spear-throwing was a bit juvenile, I will grant you that."

"Juvenile?" Loki said, enraged. "The Thor I knew would have bashed that lovely little head in at the first available instant! Certainly at the insult to your mother. I had thought you pleasantly humbled, I'll admit, but I was wrong. You're weak-willed, is what you are, king of New Asgard—"

"Loki," Thor said, letting warning seep into his tone.

Loki had endured Jarnsaxa's outbursts, just as they all had, so Thor would forgive him this. And he did not seem to know, as Thor did, the difference between an insult from Thrym, who wielded power enough to do New Asgard harm, and an insult from Jarnsaxa, who was only a nitwit. The former roused Thor's ire, for it might threaten New Asgard's standing with all the giants. The latter was only an irritation, an embarrassment.

Loki was still ranting, however.

"How could you marry that creature? How could you be so shallow? _How_?"

Thor didn't really have an answer. There were periods in the past three hundred years which he could not fully explain even to himself, periods that he had passed in a fugue of shame. Shame after losing Asgard. Shame at not truly knowing his father, not knowing the depths of Odin's cruelty or of his capacity for selfless sacrifice. Shame, too, at losing Sif to someone who could love her the way she deserved to be loved. 

And yes, he supposed. He had been weak to Jarnsaxa's flattery. Once, after all, it had been skillfully deployed at him. Jarnsaxa had seen him working in the palace; concocted some story of winning himself a romantic, muscled servant with royal roots; and then rather shamelessly flirted with Thor for two hundred and sixty years to make it happen. And even Thor was not immune to that much dedicated attention. 

"He's not even that good-looking!" Loki hissed now. "With that sharp little chin and those skinny limbs and that hideously long forehead!"

"You have a sharp chin and skinny limbs and a very long forehead," Thor pointed out.

Loki broke off, going sky-blue with rage.

"I do not! How—how dare you? Do all giants from the Ice Islands look the _same_ to you?"

Thor was about to protest that Loki was not from the Ice Islands, that he was of Laufey's line, but then he remembered. Loki was illegitimate, impure and ignoble in the eyes of the giants. 

Loki, meanwhile, was hissing and spitting and rolling around delightedly in the sensation of being insulted, deepening the insult to include all kinds of nonsense.

"I who am trying so hard to help you! To rehabilitate you with noble giant society! Who have taken your side against Thrym countless times now! And yet you compare me to that brainless little numbskull. You know, Thor, I think our years of history must mean nothing to you. Why, just as the author of _The Wicked Brother_ painted you as a paper-thin villain, sometimes I think you paint me nothing more than—"

Thor brought a hand to his temples, tuning this all out. Loki had always loved his dramatic little pronouncements, just the same way Jarnsaxa loved his. And for a moment, Thor forgot how badly he wanted to regain their friendship, and how he needed to stay on Loki's good side for the trial, and considered playing along.

_Oh yes, Loki. The truth is, I've never really known you. You're an enigma. And, really, we're too different, you and I. Honestly, you mean about as much to me as any other giant does. About the same as Jarnsaxa. About the same as Thrym, come to think of it._

But no, he did not want to ruffle Loki's feathers. And he did not want to cuff Loki, as he once might have. He was too tired for either course of action, and they both struck him as somehow silly, like tossing spears at Jarnsaxa had been. Perhaps things between them would always be a little bit childish, but that was a sad thought for Thor. He wanted them to be more than that.

Actually, what he really wanted was very clear to him, all of a sudden. 

It had never been Jarnsaxa, beautiful as Jarnsaxa was. It had been someone just as annoying, just as sharp-chinned and stupid, in his own way. Someone Thor had been desperately relieved to see after three hundred years, someone who he had thought might never forgive him for Odin's actions. 

Someone who got along swimmingly with Thrud, of all people, and who knew just how to get Jarnsaxa to leave.

Thor slid down off of his mole-bear and approached Loki's.

"You know, Thor, I scarcely even feel bad about all this _Wicked Brother_ nonsense, if this is the way you— what are you doing?"

He was grasping Loki by his feathery collar and hauling him off his mole-bear. Loki gave an undignified squawk. He cringed a bit, as though expecting to be hit, but Thor only pulled him close. Although the unseasonable heat had made beads of sweat break out on his brow, his skin was cold, as were his lips. But it was a good kiss all the same. Because Thor wanted it. Norns, did he want it. He had wanted it three hundred years ago when he'd learned his mother planned to ask Loki for help, and he had wanted it three hundred years before that when he'd learned his father had sent Loki away. Perhaps he had even wanted it long, long before, when Loki had first come to Asgard and seemed so desperately in need of guidance and care, and bossy, stupid Thor had failed him in that. 

He wanted it. He took the kiss now, demanded it, and Loki shook against him, bringing his gloved hands up to Thor's jaw, moaning slightly against Thor's touch. When they broke apart, Loki was wild-eyed, as though he wasn't certain what had happened or what he had committed himself to. 

"You don't look like Jarnsaxa," Thor offered, into the gloomy, silvery silence that followed. "To tell you the truth, brother, Jarnsaxa's much better-looking."

Loki's offended shriek was loud enough to compete with Snorli-song. Thor had to grin at that, even as he wound his fingers through Loki's hair.

"But," he continued cheekily, "you _do_ share some traits with him. Or rather, he shares some traits with you. Not just the general weediness, you understand, but a penchant for dramatics, a taste for lying flattery, a need to wrap himself up in story rather than reality, a _deeply_ irritating over-use of magic in the stupidest ways—"

"Your point?" Loki demanded, drawing himself up, clearly offended.

"Jarnsaxa was like you," Thor said, simple about it. "I did not want Jarnsaxa. I wanted you."

Loki took in a sharp breath. Thor lifted his chin slightly, examining the strange vulnerability in his eyes.

"I suppose that settling for Jarnsaxa when I wanted you was not ever very fair to Jarnsaxa," he said, after a moment.

"Jarnsaxa can hang," Loki snarled, and dove in for another kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: having gotten exactly what he really wanted, Loki proceeds to freak out about it.


	8. Plot Twists Ahead

The first thing Loki did after the hunt was call En Dwi again. 

No. Not quite. The first thing Loki did was stumble into his quarters while undoing his cloak with shaking hands. Then he threw a hairbrush at the startled ice tub servant to get him to leave. Then he caught sight of his own rumpled, kiss-mussed demeanor in the pool. _Then_ he waded in and called En Dwi. 

He had the pathetic urge to speak to a friend, and En Dwi was the closest thing he had to that. 

This time the Grandmaster of Sakaar was bare-chested, surrounded by twelve amorous purple tentacles. He did not immediately notice that Loki was calling him. 

“En Dwi,” Loki managed. “Urfyrriliax. It’s me. Loki.”

“Wha—?” En Dwi said, removing his mouth from one particularly affectionate sucker. “Oh, this isn’t Urfyrriliax. No, I killed Urfyrriliax. This is his brother or something. Oh, hey! You look debauched.”

It was true. Somehow, between the two of them, Loki knew he looked the more debauched. Because Thor had kissed him. Thor had _kissed_ him. Kissed _him_. 

How on earth had that happened? Thor was not supposed to be kissing him. 

Though recounting the kisses to En Dwi only produced a yawn. 

“This is why you call me? Unless he kissed you, uh, on your rear, while a Nitarellian sex monster possessed his brain, I’m not seeing what the big deal is,” En Dwi said, making swift hand motions to direct the tentacles further down. “It’s tame. I’m bored now.”

Loki scrambled to explain. It was not what had happened at the hunt, but who it had happened with. Loki had slept with love-desperate Nitarellian sex zombies and scarcely remembered it. But those kisses with Thor — those would be seared onto his brain forever. 

“Your brother?” En Dwi said. “I’ve kissed my brother. Who hasn’t kissed their brother every now and then? I’ve done a lot more than that with mine.”

Loki did not doubt it, as now En Dwi was giggling and being lifted out of the frame, presumably via a tentacle to the rear. 

“No,” Loki said firmly. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have called. You wouldn’t understand. Thor is not like you or me. Thor is—“

He broke off. 

Damn him, that was the whole trouble. He did not actually know what Thor was. He’d thought he’d known, thought Thor was little more than an unreachable golden torment, an arrogant, painful part of Loki’s own past. But Thor was so much more than that. Thor was something at once more stupid and more marvelous. He was a Thor willing to debase himself by acting servant, by tussling with his beloved children, by kissing Loki of all people. 

“Thor is not supposed to be kissing me,” he admitted, a little helplessly. 

En Dwi’s voice floated down to him, between moans. 

“Well, uh, people are also not supposed to fuck Kronans, kid. And you and I have been there, done that.”

That was true. Although. Wait. 

“Who is the Kronan in this scenario?” Loki demanded sharply. “Me or—“

“Thor. Duh!” said En Dwi. “He’s the one that poisoned that baby, the last I recall.”

Loki was already doused in cold water, so the mention of _The Wicked Brother_ was less like that, and more like being abruptly seized by the throat. 

Suddenly, he did not want to talk anymore. He cut the call. 

He was left sodding wet, still in his clothes in the bath. Still entirely unsure of what had happened today. Still fairly sure that, were the world a nice place, a balanced place that rewarded the good and punished the evil, today would not have happened at all. 

He was not sure how long he stayed like this, but soon enough a knock came on the door. Byleistr let himself in. 

“Dragging Helblindi on the hunt?” he said. 

Helblindi had certainly thought it was his own idea, but Loki was too overwhelmed to point this out. It didn't matter. With Helblindi there to distract him, Thrym had quite forgotten to do anything to Thor, and so Loki did not regret planting the seed in Helblindi’s mind. 

“He’s very happy. He caught the Snorli.”

“I don’t care how happy he is!” Byleistr said. “He could have been killed by that thing! Or suffered heatstroke, with how hot the midday becomes. Or fallen into a sun pool—“

“He’s the tallest and purest giant on Jotunheim,” Loki recited. “So full of winter that spears cannot fell him, and it would take vats and vats of poison to kill him. I knew he would be fine, and he was.”

“We need him,” Byleistr said. He cast around for somewhere to sit and found most of Loki’s furniture too small, and so pulled himself onto Loki’s bed. Loki offered him a sneer. 

“Please, make yourself at home.”

“You promised me stability in Jotunheim,” was all Byleistr said in response. “You know we need Helblindi for that.”

Yes, well. Loki promised a lot of things and cheerfully broke those promises when it suited him. It was not his fault that he’d kept the one promise he had ever made Byleistr. He had not kept it for Byleistr’s sake, or for Jotunheim, anyway. He’d kept it for himself. 

Like Loki, Byleistr had been a disappointment to Laufey. Like Loki, Byleistr had faced Laufey’s scorn when the former king had caught sight of him. But unlike Loki, Byleistr had had other family to care for him. It had made Loki’s half-brother a soft thing, a thing that had cried bitterly when Loki had been sent to Asgard. 

_I will return and I will kill him someday,_ Loki had promised. 

_You will have my help_ , Byleistr had replied. 

But when the deed was done, they’d discovered that they could not agree about Helblindi. Byleistr had pointed out that the nobles would never follow a runt like him or Loki, that no Helblindi would necessarily mean Thrym’s line on the throne. And that Thrym, vain and self-serving, was likely to drag them into another war with the other realms.

But Loki did not fear war and bloodshed the way Byleistr did, and he did not care for Jotunheim the way Byleistr did. Truthfully, he did not care for Jotunheim a whit. 

Byleistr didn’t need to know that. 

Stiffly, Loki now apologized. 

Byleistr only sighed in response. He said, “Preserving the line of Laufey is essential. I hope you will remember that when you testify before the All-Winter. I am not trusted — they think I am too friendly with Queen Frigga. And Helblindi will say any fool thing at any moment. But you, you can find a way to sort this business with the Asgardians that will not lead to bloodshed. You know the All-Winter listens to you.”

Three times, Loki had gone before the All-Winter. Once, to defend the murder of Laufey, who had let the realm fall to ruin. They had found for Loki then. Once, before that, to plead that they not let Laufey give him up to Asgard. They had found for Loki then, though Laufey had defied them, for Laufey was a tyrant who had always done as he pleased and cared nothing for the law. And once, it was said, when Loki was born. It was said that Laufey had deposited him in the temple and asked for the right to kill his runt son. It was said that the All-Winter had refused.

_We side with the little winter_ , Loki remembered them saying, at his last trial. _Not with the betrayer, the fool, the one who gave away our great power._

“They only like me because they hate Laufey for losing their Casket,” Loki said now, truthfully.

Byleistr sighed again. 

“Perhaps. But they are the first children of Ymir and only they know the workings of their minds. All we know is that you have always had strange sway with them. Please, use it for good.”

This was dangerously close to what Odin had said, once, when he had sent Loki to bargain with the Norns. Do good, Loki. Do what _I_ deem good. For Asgard’s sake. 

For Jotunheim’s. 

Never for Loki's own.

-

He that Helblindi would send the Aesir the wings of the Snorli. He told Helblindi that this was entirely Helblindi's idea, and Helblindi easily believed it.

"I am generous," he decided.

"Magnanimous to a fault," Loki assured him. "And think how it will irritate Thrym."

That was really the main benefit, as far as Loki was concerned.

Helblindi smiled, rows and rows of teeth unfurling themselves dangerously.

"Thrym is my enemy," he said. "The rival for my throne. I will give him such a fury."

"Of course you will," said Loki. "It's really very clever of you."

But the gift of those wings had sharply different repercussions, when Thor appeared a mere few days later to thank the Jotunn king for them. Loki, who was not used to kings spontaneously inviting themselves over to have breakfast with other kings they had no business being on excellent terms with, promptly spat out his fish tea when Thor strode in.

As he was sitting on Helblindi's shoulder, this annoyed his half-brother. Helblindi plucked him off and deposited him at the foot of the throne. Loki was left sprawled in his dressing gown on the cool ice floor.

"I thank your majesty for his generosity, for it tells all of Jotunheim that you and I remain friends," Thor called up to Helblindi, shooting Loki a bemused look as Loki scrambled up.

"Say nothing of it. Have some shaved ice," was all Helblindi said by way of reply. He seemed unbothered by Thor, too busy rubbing at himself to try and rid himself of Loki's spilled tea. 

For the duration of the breakfast, he was largely concerned with picking up various squawking servants and demanding that they make sure he had no more fish tea on his shoulder. Loki was hissing for a hairbrush and some leggings and also wishing that the great ice floor of the palace would swallow them all whole, particularly Thor, who could have warned them that he would be appearing.

Thor, for his part, appeared to be jiggling something he was holding in the depths of his cloak. He only revealed it after breakfast. 

"The baby," Loki said, as they walked together to his quarters. "You brought the baby. Of course you brought the baby."

Magni was a fat blue blob tucked behind his father's muscled arm. He had a stuffed serpent rattle, hideously bulbous cheeks, and a swath of hair so pale it was almost white. Loki decided that it was likely he would be very ugly in the future, despite the astonishing good looks of both his parents, and felt a little better about the morning's events.

"Jarnsaxa is sleeping off some revel and hardly noticed it was my week this time," Thor said. "And I wasn't going to remind him."

"Yes, but do you have to bring your children everywhere?" Loki said. "As though they are essential? They're not dental floss!"

"Dental floss?" Thor said, squinting at him.

It could be used to clean your teeth, conjured into a snake, and En Dwi had taught him no fewer than fifteen sex tricks involving dental floss, which were useful for whiling away the bored moments. Loki always had dental floss. 

"Forget about it," he decided, as explaining this to Thor would be perhaps more trouble than it was worth. 

"Er, gladly," Thor said. Then, "Fetch me a cradle, will you?"

"Fetch you a cradle?" Loki said. "What?"

"Well, this isn't New Asgard, where we had to carve all our cradles anew," Thor said. "Surely you have one or two spare cradles."

"No, this is great palace of Jotunheim," Loki said. "The only cradles we have are the size of a mole-bear trough!"

"That'll do," Thor decided.

In the end, Loki conjured the cradle and stuffed his feather cloak into it, and then Thor placed Magni into it with supreme gentleness. Magni, in response, burped up some food in his sleep and so ruined both his serpent rattle and Loki's cloak.

"Charming," Loki said. 

But focusing on Magni had meant that there was no need to focus on him and Thor, and now that Magni's needs were provided for (those needs being a place to sleep and an item of Loki's to casually vomit on), there was little to do but turn his attention to his other guest.

Who had kissed him. Who was looking at him now, his one eye completely unreadable.

Loki pulled himself onto his bed and tried to resist the urge to hug his limbs or do something equally childish. He felt about three feet tall and very young, which was silly because he was perfectly of age and wicked, to boot, and should not have been undone with a glance.

"So," Thor said meaningfully.

"Whatever you're going to do, just do it," Loki snapped.

"What?" Thor said. "What do you think I came here to do?"

Hit Loki, perhaps, for some slight he had just discovered which Loki had long forgotten about. Or no, more likely: protest that the kiss had been a mistake. Or declare himself too burdened with children to do much more than kiss. Or beg Loki to help with something stupid, something related to New Asgard; or drone on about those iron reserves; or—

"You do realize that I came here to kiss you again, right?" Thor said.

"I know that!" Loki retorted.

But he didn't know it, didn't really believe it until Thor had shrugged off his cloak and planted his muscled arms on either side of Loki, pinning Loki to the bed. As he leaned in, Loki couldn't help but run his fingers up those arms, breathing heavily. Compared to many giants, Thor was tiny, but in this moment all Loki could think of was the solid mass of him, the firm warmth of his skin.

And though he knew the kiss was coming this time, it still managed to surprise him. He had imagined Thor stealing kisses from him before, but never with this degree of tenderness. The roughest thing Thor did was bring a knee up and pull himself onto the bed, pressing Loki back onto the sheets. Then, more kisses. Thor took his time with these. He pulled back Loki's dressing gown and pressed love marks to his throat, kissed his way across Loki's chest. Loki supposed it was all very chaste, except for how drunk it made him feel. He became embarrassingly needy, hands scrambling on Thor's shoulders, legs clenched lest Thor discover how wet and messy this was all making him. Loki had done a great deal more in his life than just kiss, of course. But that didn't seem to matter to his traitorous body.

"One would think you'd never done this before," Thor said fondly, after nothing but a bit of petting left Loki mewling at him.

He hadn't. He'd done far worse than this, and suddenly he could not tell whether it would be sadder to conceal or admit that. 

_I fucked my way across Sakaar eleven times, Thor, but the truth is: it turns out I was saving my kisses for you._

"Pathetic," Loki managed.

"Oh, pathetic, am I?" Thor retorted, misunderstanding completely. "This says otherwise."

And then he was palming Loki through his underclothes, the motion so clumsy it should not have been this good. A little rough now, but not too rough, the friction delicious. Loki widened his legs to give him better access. Thor, bless him, took this as his cue to sneak a finger past Loki's loincloth and into the mess that was Loki's cunt. It was a solid, not-unwelcome intrusion, not nearly enough to fill Loki the way Loki wanted, but enough for him to fuck back against. 

"We're rutting like two-hundred-year-old virgins," Loki complained, not stopping for a second. "It's unseemly."

"Well, we all know _I'm_ not a virgin," Thor said, as though Loki was. 

The implication was ridiculous. Loki should have laughed in his face. But Thor, damn him, chose this moment to pull back, so instead Loki was left making incoherent noises of complaint. Luckily, he rejoined Loki very quickly, after stripping himself of his leggings. He helped Loki pull off his loincloth, too.

Then Thor's length was skin to skin with Loki's and they were really rutting together. Loki's only thought now was moving with Thor just enough, just fast enough, to perhaps wring out their pleasure before that blasted baby awoke. Thor seemed to be of the same mind. 

"Who's going to make who come first, hmmm?" he said roughly.

Then he crooked two fingers up inside Loki, both sliding in easily. _Stretching_. The stretch was all Loki needed. He felt it build inside him, felt the promise of fullness there. A moan left him, unbidden. 

Oh, this was going too far. He scrambled again and managed to reverse their positions. Though Thor's fingers slid out at this, Loki guided them back in, needing them, needing to fuck himself against them.

"This isn't fair," he informed Thor. "Breaching me like this. I can't do the same to you."

"All's fair," Thor said, and pulled Loki down for another kiss. 

Loki, for his part, snuck his own hand between them, wrapping his fingers around their cocks. The heft of Thor's was new, promising, but he was too wound up to appreciate it. This was a contest now, so he gave as good as Thor did, until Thor groaned into his mouth and arched off of the bed.

"I win," Loki crooned. Then, despite his own insistent needs, he leaned down. He very kindly and expertly lapped at Thor's spend, to cement his victory. 

-

After Loki, too, had added to the mess on the bed, Thor made it known that he wanted to hold him.

This was...odd. Certainly it was another first for Loki. He had conjured away the mess and now they were just lying amid all the fur sheets, as swaddled and warm together as Magni was in his cradle. And Loki wasn't entirely sure what they were supposed to do at this point. Surely rational, busy adult people did not just fall asleep together. Surely _Thor_ was not interested in falling asleep with _Loki_.

For one thing, the last few times that had happened, though it had been centuries ago, Loki had always, without fail, stabbed him in the night. Only now he didn't particularly want to stab Thor. He could not think of a single thing that such an action would gain him. Thor's attention? For once, Loki had that already. 

"So how about those iron reserves?" Loki tried, casting about for something to say.

"Shhh," said Thor, his arms tightening about Loki.

"And your mother? How is your mother?"

"Stop talking about my mother," Thor growled. "Go to sleep, Loki."

"Thrud? Sif? That Valkyrie of yours?"

"Loki, _shut up_."

Something in his tone made Loki shut up, but could not quiet Loki's brain. He was trying to decide whether to stab Thor after all, possibly just as a way of expressing his intense shock, when Magni resolved the issue by waking and screaming at the top of his lungs.

"He's an excellent child," Loki decided, shooting up out of Thor's arms at once.

Thor groaned again and rose far more reluctantly. He dropped from the bed like a stone and then grumpily made his way to the cradle, where he lifted Magni out and fussed over him, rocking him back and forth and shaking the serpent rattle and saying a great many combinations of words that were utter nonsense.

"What are you looking at? Go, get him some ice-yak milk,” he told Loki, in between snatches of some song that appeared to involve ducks and rabbits.

Loki rang for some yak milk. It took longer for it to arrive than it should have, he thought. Ten minutes at least, which meant ten minutes of Magni screaming. In that time, he tried getting up to assist Thor with the duck-rabbit song (it had a grand total of three lines, and was not difficult to learn), but the sight of his face only seemed to make Magni scream louder.

When the ice tub servant arrived, it was to _very_ dark looks from Loki.

"Tell me, slave," Loki snapped, stalking up to the tub, pulling a bottle of yak milk from among all the ice shavings, and bringing it back to Thor. "How promptly are you supposed to answer your master?"

"Ealfi?" Thor said. This was perhaps another nonsense word to soothe Magni, who was now suckling the yak milk like a demented thing.

"And what penalty should I dish out?" Loki continued. "For you have—"

"Thor?" said the ice tub servant.

Then Loki had an armful of farting, yak-milk-dribbling child, as Thor and the ice tub servant embraced each other.

"Ealfi!"

"Thor!"

" _What is happening_?" Loki hissed.

"This is my friend," Thor said. Despite these words, he had the ice tub servant in a headlock. The ice tub servant took this amiably.

"It's been so long!"

"How glad I am to see you survive still, Ealfi! I thought all my palace friends had died in that last tragic game of Finfinfin!"

"Oh no, we were only grievously wounded. And we all miss you, my friend!"

"And I miss you!"

"It's terrible what they're saying about you, because of that blasted book—"

"Ealfi, you cannot know the relief I feel to hear you say those words."

"We are all enraged on your behalf. We know you to be a good man, Thor!"

Loki had to stand there and watch all this. It involved a great deal of sentimental wrestling, Thor and Ealfi jostling about like very large boys that also happened to have tears in their eyes and a complete lack of shame about the tears in their eyes. 

"And I just hold the baby, then?" he asked. “The farting baby?"

Thor had the grace to look guilty at this. He stopped wrestling and took back his extremely smelly child. But after this, he invited Ealfi to partake of the fish lunch with them, as Thor wanted to hear about all the servants' goings-on and Ealfi wanted to hear tales of New Asgard. 

The servant looked at Thor a little mournfully now. "All of the smaller giants dream of joining you there." 

"You are all welcome there, my friend," Thor said, clearly meaning it. "My home is yours."

"Technically it's not, though," Loki pointed out. Thor seemed to be proposing some kind of refuge for the palace slaves, and that, Loki was certain, would cause serious political ramifications. And Thor had stumbled onto plenty of those already. Thor, however, only sent him a censuring look over the rim of his fish soup bowl. 

After lunch, he insisted on going down to the kitchens with Ealfi to say hello to all his friends. Magni he left snuffling away in the cradle after changing the child, a process Loki never wanted to see happen again ever in his life. 

"I will return in but a moment," Thor said. "Perhaps I should take him with me?"

Loki did not want to risk more screaming from Magni, who appeared to scream at being woken, carried, or subjected to any activities of any sort. He waved Thor off.

"I will call a nursing servant if he bothers me," he said. "Although perhaps not, since the servants may be too busy fawning over you."

Thor only grinned at this. He left Loki alone with Magni. Loki wandered up to the cradle to get a look at the fat little thing. Magni had abandoned his stuffed snake and was now trying to eat his own toes.

"You are a very plodding child," Loki decided. "Not nearly as clever as your sister."

In response, Magni caught sight of him, opened his mouth, and began to scream again.

-

Loki gave him sweets. Loki gave him toys. Loki rocked the cradle, then set the cradle to floating on the pool, then fished it back and dumped Magni on the bed. 

None of this worked. Still Magni screamed and screamed. 

“Stop this right this instant, or I will turn you into a frog,” Loki threatened. 

Magni paused, hiccuped, and then continued to scream. 

The trouble with turning Magni into a frog was that he was so small he’d turn out more of a tadpole. And then Loki would be likely to lose him and never find him again, and then Loki would have to transfigure a cushion or a shoe into something resembling Magni, and even Thor was bound to notice, a couple hundred years down the line, that he was raising a shoe instead of a child. 

Loki gave up and called for a nursing servant. None came. It seemed his prediction about Thor charming all the servants was coming true. Still Magni screamed. 

“You think you’re bothering me, but you’re not bothering me at all,” Loki told him. 

Magni stopped. Opened his mouth again. Screamed again. 

“Really, you’re only making a fool of yourself.”

After another pause, then back to screaming. 

“I know you’re listening to me, because you keep pausing. So what on earth is the matter? Do you want your father back?”

Suddenly, he had an idea. As Magni continued to wail, Loki cast about in his chests and amid all the clutter on his shelves until he found it. _The Wicked Brother_. If Thor objected to this particular bedtime story, well. Then perhaps Thor should not have abandoned Loki with the vicious little bilgesnipe currently masquerading as his youngest child. 

Loki settled Magni back in his cradle, then pulled up a chair a foot or so away, leaning forward and setting the book on his knee. As Magni continued to cry, Loki thumbed through a number of salacious scenes that were clearly inappropriate even for a baby bilgesnipe. He skipped the section with the infant poisoning, as the thought of reading that to Magni made even Loki feel sick to his stomach. 

But there. There. The scene where Lulli, the story’s simpering little hero, came upon Angrboda conjuring in the wood. This would do.

“ _Lulli discovered a great man, a powerful man,_ ” Loki read. “ _Not blue like an ordinary giant, no! This man was nothing so commonplace! This man had skin as fair as snow and hair of molten gold_.’”

Magni paused in his crying. Loki read on. 

“ _Though the man was smaller than the average giant and missing one eye, Lulli could not help but be drawn to him, for he had never seen a being so beautiful. The man’s demeanor was regal, his single orb a crystalline blue that was at once entrancing and terrifying. He stood before a large fire which lit the Ironwood brilliantly, but the dangerous warmth seemed to do him no harm. This was how Lulli knew the man was a powerful sorcerer._ ”

Lulli, having precisely one thing on his mind in this scene, then dropped his loincloth and attempted to seduce Angrboda, only to have the seduction turned back on him. Loki skipped these passages. But Magni was merely sniffling now, so reading to him seemed to be working. Loki decided to pick up again with the passage directly after all the oral sex. 

“‘ _Prodigious is your manhood, witch,’ Lulli cried, as he helped Angrboda back into his leggings. ‘As great as your sorcery. But how came you to be trapped in the Ironwood? Were you, like I was, cursed by an evil demon to become so short that your glorious family misplaced you on a hunting trip?’_

_Angrboda only smiled mysteriously. Thunder and ice crackled from his fingertips as he caressed Lulli’s demon-weakened form, causing Lulli to shiver again with untold want._

_‘No,’ answered the lusty sorcerer of the Ironwood. ‘You were born to be king of the nine realms, destined to be the tallest of any race, and it was only that enchanted eyebrow-ring which condemned you to shrink to your current size, my sweet Lulli. By contrast, I was born small! For my smallness I was hunted by my father and exiled to the Ironwood as a child. But I have thrived here, for my cleverness is great, and now the very hells of Jotunheim are my kingdom.'_

_Lulli felt the stirrings of admiration come upon him again for the handsome witch. But his tender heart felt, too, for the grievous abuse Angrboda claimed to have suffered. Tears began to fall from his sweet crimson eyes._

_'You dare cry for me?' Angrboda said._

_'I cry for the innocent child you were,' Lulli sobbed, clinging to Angrboda's bulging muscles._

_'Yes, see how innocent,' sneered Angrboda, the sneer making him even more handsome than he was when he was not sneering. 'For have you not noticed? We stand now upon the bones of my dead father, the very giant you have long sought to free you from your curse. But he cannot help you now, Lulli! I have killed him!'_

_Whereupon Lulli noticed that the ground beneath them was indeed strewn with the bloody remains of a large giant, and Lulli did swoon with horror and fall into the wicked sorcerer's waiting arms._ "

Magni cooed. Evidently he enjoyed the twist with the dead father. Loki nodded at him approvingly, wondering what he would think of the plot twists ahead. Of course, those were far off yet. The next scene was one of dubiously consensual seduction on the dead father's remains. He skipped that one as well. He read instead from the following chapter, wherein Lulli's elf best friend Helga came to rescue him.

" _What a scene did Helga behold the next morning! Sweet Lulli, debased as never before, moaning as he wrapped himself around the evil sorcerer's splendid broad legs!_

_'Oh, but only let me stay with you and know always the pleasures of the flesh,' Lulli sobbed._

_'Been there, done that, my dear,' cackled Angrboda, and shoved the lovesick Lulli to the ground. 'Now cease this sentiment, for I cannot abide it!'_

_'Fiend!' Helga cried. She knew at once how evil Angrboda truly was. Indeed, her mind whirred as she put it all together. It had been Angrboda who had sold them the enchanted eyebrow-ring! It had been Angrboda who had turned Lulli's sweet old grandfather into a frog! Yes, Helga remembered it all now! It had even been Angrboda who had cut off all her lovely hair!_ "

Here Magni made a questioning noise.

"Yes, I never did figure out why she was so upset about the hair," Loki said. "I mean, it grew back. But some people just like to hold grudges."

Magni burped.

"Oh, no, she's still mad," Loki said. "To this day."

Magni punched the side of the cradle.

"My thoughts exactly," Loki said. "Well, the next scene is, er, a three-way, so let's just skip ahead to the sacrifice of the kittens, shall we?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: finally, we learn what Thor's been doing with all that iron.


	9. Founders

Just before the month of grey sleet, New Asgard celebrated its founding. 

Though perhaps ‘celebrate’ was the wrong term. Before they could permit themselves to celebrate, they had to mark the loss of old Asgard, and so the celebration was preceded by a week of fasting and remembrance, a week of lighting pyres for Thor’s father, the Warriors Three, and the other lost, a week in which even little Thrud was solemn, her questioning face downcast as she and her friends watched the older Aesir wrestle with their grief. 

It was not Thor’s favorite time of year. But it was necessary. And when the mourning-spell broke, there was a feast and bouts of storytelling; gifts to each family from the king, to thank them for their part in building the new land; and a special show from the Dowager Queen herself, who would charm the land. The soil of New Asgard was bountiful but strange, bearing very different crops than the Aesir were accustomed to: sweeter grains, more sour fruit, spiced gourds. But Thor’s people adapted to that, for the Aesir were hardy. No, they told their Queen, it was the flowers they missed most of all, the flowers from her famous gardens. And so once a year Frigga spent great magic coaxing those same flowers from the soil, for a riotous presentation in the town square. 

This year, she did not do so alone. Loki, her first and best student, stalked among the assembled Aesir, pressing his fingers to the soil just as the Queen did. His flowers were not quite the ones Thor remembered from his mother’s garden beds, not pink and purple like Frigga’s, but instead the wild red poppies that had grown up between city paving stones, the purple-black hollyhocks of Asgardian country lanes. These produced as much shrieking delight as Frigga’s did. The assembled Aesir did not discriminate, seizing the blooms and plaiting them into garlands, for later there would be dancing and all wanted to look their best. 

Thor stole up behind Loki and took up a sprig of the hollyhocks. He bent them into a makeshift bracelet and slipped it onto Loki’s wrist. 

He was rewarded with Loki whirling around to face him. Today, he had prepared himself as strikingly as he had for the Snorli-hunt, hair neat, black nails sharp and shining. 

“I’m told I missed the mourning,” he said, as though it hardly mattered to him. “Well. I was never a true Asgardian. Kind of your mother to invite me to this, at least.”

Thor was not sure how to tell him that he’d missed everything and nothing, that the week they spent mourning was a week in which they all touched an emptiness so profound that perhaps it was better not to give weight to it at all, lest it consume you. 

Not all the Aesir were present now. Every year, there was one or two who could not bring themselves to celebrate at all, and Thor could not blame them. 

“Mother has something for you,” he told Loki, putting these dark thoughts away for the time being. 

It was that tapestry. Three hundred years she'd worked on it, and still it was not perfect in her eyes. Lately, thanks to Loki's arrival back on Jotunheim, Thor would wake in the night and find Frigga working on it devotedly, hair a mess, mouth pursed, imbued with perfectionist dissatisfaction. 

Loki, of course, knew none of this.

"I hope it's a lemon cake," was all he said. "I always liked her lemon cakes."

"You certainly stole enough of them," Thor said.

"She made extra for me to steal."

That was true, and it made Thor grateful for both Loki and his mother, grateful that between the two of them they could produce one memory that was wholly sweet, not tinged with grief or guilt or shame. 

"You'll sit with us at the feast," Thor said. "With the royal family." 

It was not a request. It might even have been an order.

"Who else am I to sit with? The servants?" Loki said, rolling his eyes. But later he allowed Thor to take him by the hand, the same hand wound with the garland, and direct him to the royal table, where Thrud and her mothers waited for them.

"Who are we to feast on?" Loki asked Thrud, already knowing the general direction of her thoughts. "It's not Jarnsaxa, is it?"

"I've changed my mind about eating him," Thrud said, with a sigh. "I have a great imagination, but even I can't imagine a world where he tastes good."

"We'd be picking his belly button rings out of our teeth for days," Brunnhilde added. She spoke presumably to lighten the mood, as Sif was looking very cool at the prospect of Loki speaking so freely to their daughter.

Loki, admittedly, did not make things better.

"Well, we could always find another way to get rid of Jarnsaxa," he told Thrud.

"I'd like to drop him in the ocean," Thrud said, thinking it over.

"You'd have to drug him first. He's far too big for you to handle. Frostflower root does the trick," Loki offered.

"Could I just poison him with that?" Thud said.

"Oh, no," said Loki. "For that you'd need red-ice powder, or mistletoe. Anything poisonous to giants. Not that those are exactly wonderful for the Aesir constitution."

"Prince Loki," Sif put in sharply. "Tell us: have _you_ any children?"

Thor was relieved at what seemed to him a perfectly normal topic of conversation, and one he had wondered at himself. Loki was now of age to be a father, after all. But Loki's expression suggested that this was like asking if he had lice. 

"Where on earth do you think I'd put them if I did?" he retorted.

"With a wife, a spouse, a lover," Sif suggested. "It can't only be Thor who captures all your attention."

"Not that paying attention to me is a bad thing," Thor put in, seeing now how Sif intended to needle Loki. “It’s perfectly normal. I’m both handsome and very personable.”

But Loki purpled anyway, as though he had not been _extremely_ attentive to Thor a mere week ago. 

Frigga fought to save the conversation.

"Brunnhilde, dear. I don’t believe you and Loki have ever had a chance to get to know each other properly. When you were in Asgard, he was on Jotunheim, and when he was in Asgard, you were off with the other Valkyries.”

“And now you’re both here and he inserts himself in every corner of Thor’s affairs,” Sif put in. “So it’s safe to say he’s not here with designs on you, wife mine.”

But Loki glided smoothly over Sif’s interjection and seized on Frigga’s instead. Thor’s mother knew him, after all. She knew how Loki was a magpie for secrets, ruthlessly collecting them where he could, and for much of their childhood the strange disappearance of the Valkyries had haunted him, Sif, and Thor. 

"You all returned when Hela did,” Loki guessed now. “Tell me, were you biding your time for her? Odin sent you off as part of some bold master plan, perhaps, so that he might have one force lying in wait for Hela, a band of warriors that she could not predict would return to fight her."

Brunnhilde snorted. She picked up a cob of green Jotunn corn, sprinkled it with sugar to combat its odd bitterness, and regarded it thoughtfully. Her demeanor was calm, but her next words, Thor knew, came out only with difficulty. She had lost her first wife to Hela.

"We sent ourselves away," she said. "It was not an easy choice. It was to choose dishonor. But Odin had always made clear that for honor, he had the Einherjar. For intrigue, for thankless ruses, for endangering ourselves to uphold his whole golden sham— _that_ was what he saw the Valkyries as good for."

Silence, for a moment. Now they were all a little too concerned with sweetening their corn, save Thrud, who was bored by talk of Odin and was making spit bubbles, and save Frigga and Loki. Thor's mother was watching his once-brother, gaze sharp but not unkind. She knew, as they all did, that here Loki and Brunnhilde shared common ground.

But Loki did not indicate it. Thor was almost disappointed at how carefully blank he kept his face.

"It must have cost you dearly to return and defend him," Loki said, mild about it.

"We returned to defend _Asgard_ ," said Brunnhilde. "We did not die for Odin, not any more than you offered us this land for his sake."

Loki's mouth twisted strangely.

"Really, you all give me far too much credit for what amounts to some caves and farmland," he said, after a few moments. 

Thor shoved him gently.

"Humility suits you ill, brother, so stop pretending you have it," he said. "Mother, will we show him now?"

"It isn't quite ready," Frigga replied, with a little smile, "but I don't see why not."

And it was true that she continually unraveled one side, as if no colors could be rich enough, no image quite right to portray her affection for Loki. But the image of Loki against the backdrop of New Asgard, the golden fields unfurling behind him — even Frigga had to admit that this was perfect, so lifelike that, when it was unfurled before the royal table, it was as if two Lokis were present.

Thor snuck a look at the living Loki's face, a paler blue now than the rich shades Frigga had selected for the tapestry Loki. For an instant and only an instant, the real Loki seemed vulnerable. Though only Thor could see it, his black nails were shredding his hollyhock garland beneath the table.

"I think I shall put some of the people of New Asgard here," said Frigga, gesturing now at the unfinished side. "You presenting our new land to us. That is what I want to capture. Our home, and its Jotunn founder."

Loki’s mouth stretched so thin that his lips vanished entirely. For one who adored praise the way he did, who wanted to be lavished with attention as Loki always had, this was a strange response, this mere facsimile of a smile. 

\- 

After the feast there was the storytelling, to which Loki was well-suited. As he entertained the crowd in the great hall, Sif pulled Thor off into a corner. 

“Do you think this is a good idea?” she demanded. 

“Do I think what is a good idea?”

“You stumbled back from the palace with a bruised neck and a swagger you did not have before, Thor. I’m not a fool. Do you truly believe that romancing Loki, jealous hostage of your father, exiled for reasons too dark even for the Allfather to speak of, the Jotunn royal said to soon be sealing your fate — _our_ fate — with the All-Winter — does that seem to you a good idea?”

Thor knew what she was building to, of course, but mulishly decided that she would have to pull him there. Thrud had wound poppies around his neck, and now he picked at them like he had not a care in the world. 

“I think I have excellent taste in romantic partners, for my part,” he said. 

Sif’s exasperation shone from every corner of her face. 

“Alright, perhaps not with Jarnsaxa,” Thor admitted. 

“For Loki to let himself become so close to you is reckless! If he cared about what this looks like for us, or even for himself, then he would seek to be impartial. At least to look impartial. But he is ever an agent of chaos—“

“He is trying for impartiality,” Thor said, beginning to feel irritated now. “Or he would not attend revels with Thrym, with Jarnsaxa. And you have criticized him for doing that as well. You cannot have it both ways, Sif.”

Sif shook her head. 

“Make your choices, then,” she said, sounding disgusted. “You ever have.”

He could make no choice that would turn his back on Loki. Not after reconciling with him, not after having missed him for so long, not after enduring that strange guilt over Loki’s banishment. It had been, as Sif put it, for reasons unknown. But Thor had always secretly felt that he knew the reason. Loki was too wild, too unpredictable a creature to have danced forever on Odin’s whims. So Thor’s father, in his cruel wisdom, had cut him loose. Thor could see the utility of the choice, though he could not countenance it,. 

Perhaps Sif thought that Thor, like Odin, ought to see Loki as a tool. Thor did not want that. Thor wanted Loki to be more than that. 

He settled in against the wall to watch Loki tell tales. He had called on Thor’s mother to join him at the center of the crowd and they made an affectionate pair, Loki supplying details for every sentence Frigga dangled before him. It had been some time since Thor had seen his mother so animated, and it struck him that perhaps this was Loki's whole intention, perhaps Loki wanted to make up for his strangely subdued reaction to the tapestry. 

Soon, however, they yielded the floor to Sten, New Asgard’s resident barrel-maker, and after this the tales took a bawdy turn. Mothers and fathers began gently shuttling their children away to bed. Thor cast about for someone who could tell him where Thrud was. 

Brunnhilde could not say, and Sif just gave him a murderous look and threw up her hands. 

“I’ll take the fields, you the mole-bear stables, and Thor the barns and granaries,” Brunnhilde decided, plainly refusing to ask what they were fighting about. “She’s just avoiding her bedtime again.” 

It was now that Thor noticed Loki hovering by them, or now that Loki chose to make himself known by dramatically tossing on his feather cloak.

"No, no," he said, when Thor moved towards him. "Do not mind me, Thor. I hear talk of granaries and stables, so I will very happily take my leave."

No. Not yet. Thor had hoped to explain the situation with the iron reserves tonight. Truly, it was not a secret, but it was better to show Loki than to stumble over his words, and until now Loki had not visited New Asgard in order to be shown.

"Wait," he said. "There's one more thing. Just help me find Thrud first, and then I'll show you."

He dragged Loki to the central barn. Upon their entry, Thrud proved quite easy to find. She was lying on a large pile of mole-bear feed, snacking happily on green corn kernels and a whole haunch of rabbit that she must have stolen from the feast. 

She was also thumbing through a very lurid, very familiar book.

Thor's bellow shook the barn to its foundations. Thrud sat straight up, looking panicky.

"On the plus side," said Loki faintly, behind Thor, "she seems to be an early reader. How precocious of her."

Thor did not care how precocious it was. _The Wicked Brother, or Winter in the Ironwood_ was the last thing he wanted any child of his reading, the last thing he wanted anyone reading. He snatched it from Thrud's hands.

"Censorship!" she said. "This is very wrong of you! A king should let his people read what they like!"

"This is too adult for you!" Thor retorted.

"I'm not even that far in," said Thrud. Her exasperated face was identical to her mother's.

"Please say you haven't reached chapter three yet," Loki muttered now.

"I did, but it's very boring," Thrud complained. "Lulli keeps caressing Angrboda's staff and I can't think _why_. And all the staff does is 'spend,' but how did it get the money for that? And—"

Thor gave another bellow, enraged beyond all measure. Loki came up now and took the book from him, brandishing it before Thrud like it was proof of a great crime. Thrud, who was not at all cowed by the bellowing, looked somewhat shamefaced at this, which only made Thor want to bellow more. It was not her fault, this book. It was the fault of the nameless coward who had written it.

"Where did you get this?" Loki asked coolly.

"Jarnsaxa left it the last time he and Magni visited," said Thrud, in a small voice.

Of course. Of course Jarnsaxa had. Thor clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to will away his anger, as Jarnsaxa was not even present. His child was, and she had made a mistake, that was all. 

"And you decided to read it because you wanted to know why people are being so cruel about your father," Loki said. Thrud nodded. Loki continued.

"But now you have learned how very boring and silly it is, haven't you? Now you can see that all this fuss is over something which really should not have been written at all."

Thrud nodded again. Then she scrunched up her face and said, annoyance coloring her tone, "It's just—I don't understand! Angrboda isn't like father at all. Angrboda's really more like you, Uncle Loki—"

Loki blanched. Thor could not blame him. It was unendurable, being compared to that monstrous caricature. To see Loki so tarred only roused his anger again, and now he struggled to keep his voice firm instead of loud.

"Thrud Thorsdottir," he said. "You shall not insult our guest so. And you shall never, ever again take up this book, _is that clear_?"

Thrud nodded, rather more white-faced than before.

"To bed with you, then!" Thor said, pointing at the barn door. "Now! Go find your mothers! And I had better see you give no trouble for the rest of the week!"

Thrud went, looking chastised. Thor sat down on the sacks of mole-bear feed and put his face in his hands, needing a moment to collect himself. 

"At least she detests this Angrboda," Loki said, faintly. "I think that's probably the healthiest reaction to the work."

Thor rather thought that Thrud must like Angrboda, if she was comparing him to Loki, who she idolized, but he still said, "That makes two of us, then."

There was silence for a moment. Then Loki said, voice halting, "You really are not at all like Angrboda. You are the type to befriend slaves, and give gifts to your subjects, and tolerate even the rankest stupidity in those you consider friends. Do not get me wrong: your arrogance is boundless. But even so. This book hardly captures you, Thor."

This was precisely what Thor needed to hear, precisely the words best calculated to calm him. Loki had always been good at producing this effect in him, he recalled now. It was only that Loki so rarely bothered to indulge the talent. Still, Thor was grateful. 

"At the end, through his heedless arrogance, Angrboda destroys his entire nation," Thor pointed out.

"Yes, well, you will pardon my speaking ill of the dead, but then Angrboda is like your father or sister, and not at all like you," Loki said, sighing. He set Thrud's stolen food down on the ground and took a seat next to Thor. "For three hundred years, many of the realms have sung of nothing but Thor the Rescuer, Thor who wrested the last of his people from the clutches of death. So Jotunheim would prefer to name you a monster. What does this backwards, misbegotten realm know, anyway?"

Thor put his hands down and turned to look at him fully. Outside, New Asgard was bathed in the golden light of this part of Lands Below, but inside the Barn it was cool and dark, and the shadows softened Loki's sharp face. Thor could not resist tracing his mouth with a thumb.

"You know, brother, this is the most comfort you've given me since... Ever. I think."

Loki rolled his eyes.

"I gave you plenty of comfort last week at the palace."

"Ah, but that was mutual," Thor said. "And worth repeating, I think."

"What, on sacks of animal feed?" Loki said. 

But he was already leaning back, undoing the clasp of his cloak. Then his tunic, then his billowy shirt and boots and leggings. Loki stripped without fanfare, like he had bared himself to countless others before, but Thor enjoyed the sight regardless, the way he revealed those long limbs, the dark little nipples. Thor could not resist running the pad of his thumb over one to have it harden. Loki threw back his head and sucked in a breath, but shoved him off. 

"Not until _you're_ naked," he said. Then those long blue fingers of his were tugging at the laces of Thor's shirt and trousers, even demolishing the poppy garland, as though Loki would accept nothing less than a fully naked Thor for his hungry gaze.

When he was done, it was Thor's cock his eyes were drawn to. Not uncommon with Thor's lovers. Thor was generously-proportioned, to say the least. Loki had not taken his time processing that before, but now he sat back, quite literally licking his lips.

His own cock was more slender, bobbing up between his thighs. Thor reached for it. Loki batted him away. His hand closed again on Thor's length, as it had before, but this time he leaned forward, balanced hands and knees on the pile of feed sacks. He closed his mouth on Thor's tip.

The cool of him enveloped Thor, a feeling Thor immediately wanted more of. Thor grasped his hair and pushed his hips up. Even in the dim light, he could see the outline of the tip bulging through Loki's cheek before Loki adjusted himself, hollowing his cheeks to take Thor better. His hands stroked the rest of Thor's length, one dipping lower to Thor's testicles. 

Loki gave him cool, wet sucks at first, still fondling his flesh. Thor pushed Loki's hair out of his face with one hand, the better to see Loki staring up at him, gauging Thor’s reactions with crimson eyes. His other hand he kept entwined in Loki's hair, letting him taste and explore as he liked, but never letting him pull away completely. When Loki moaned around his cock, Thor decided it was time for more and guided him into taking more. And more. And more. Loki's lashes fluttered as he took Thor down. Thor stopped directing him when he thought Loki had reached his limit, but Loki did not stop. He breathed hard through his nose and let more of Thor slide in. Thor was almost proud of how he did not choke, how he let the thick length sit heavy on his tongue. 

It reached well into his throat at this point. Thor caressed the fragile skin there, making Loki moan again. Loki brought up a hand and forced Thor to grasp his neck, more firmly. Then he was sucking in earnest, sliding sloppily along Thor's cock. Thor fed it to him, had his other hand still fisted in his hair to keep him moving just the way Thor liked. Loki had long stopped fondling him and was tugging himself off, further down, but Thor hardly had cause to complain, just his mouth was so good. 

When Thor came, he let him up. His spend landed on Loki's waiting tongue, his cheeks. Loki swallowed and then cleared off the rest with his fingers, bringing that to his mouth too, with no shame. One stripe had landed in his hair, and this Thor took and fed to him, just to see Loki sucking on his fingers. Loki did so shamelessly, but then shot him an irritated look.

"Oh, yes, just shove your big clumsy fingers in my mouth. Too good to taste your own spend, I see."

Thor filed that away as something Loki evidently wanted to see at some point.

"I would rather taste yours."

"You can, but I spent before you did, so it's well on its way to drying now. Anyway, you'd better not let Thrud play on these feed sacks anymore."

"Ugh," Thor said. He felt as though Loki had just tossed him in the Jotunheim ocean. He reached now for their clothes. "That just ruins the mood."

"No one told you to go and have two children," Loki said, like two was a preposterous number of children to have. 

-

After that, they navigated their way beyond the light-drenched fields of New Asgard, deeper into the core. 

There were many ways to reach their destination. The great fungi forests, the passage of smooth red stone, long stripped of its iron. Loki, who seemed to intuit that their aim was to get closer to the very center of the realm, turned off for the tunnels Thor’s mother had once called the crystal caverns. They had been very beautiful, when New Asgard had first been founded. They had been the place where Jotunheim’s great ocean was deepest and most frigid, frozen into a crenellated series of caves that were lit by glowing blue and green fossils. 

Now, a great iron wall barred the entire way. 

“What is this?” Loki demanded. 

The first sign. The melting had been slow, at first, but persistent. Within the first century, the caverns had flooded, becoming impassable. To keep the water from encroaching on the great forests of fungi that surrounded the cavern, Thor had commanded that the Aesir take what they could find, which proved to be great quantities of iron, and build the wall.

“We cannot take this way. Come. I know another.”

“I happen to know all the ways and if you seek to go deeper into the under-realm, this is the fastest way,” Loki snapped. But he permitted himself to be dragged through forest instead, albeit with very dark looks at the massive branching fungi that surrounded them. 

At last the fungi fell away, the earth too hot for anything to grow. Here all was red dust, dry stone cliffs on either side. Steaming liquid light cut through the ground in dangerous furrows. If the under-realm closest to the surface was the Ironwood, then this was perhaps the Sunwood, hot as Muspelheim and four times as bright. 

Thor pulled off his shirt, the better to bear the heat. Loki dispelled his own cloak and tunic with a hand gesture. 

“Well, this may be my least favorite part of your New Asgard,” he said, shielding his eyes from the glare of the light streams. 

Deeper they went. At the first bend in the light canyon, they heard the noise. The Aesir machines were the most advanced in all the galaxy for their purposes, but they were not exactly quiet. 

“What is this?” Loki demanded again. “What are you doing down here?”

Now he was speeding up, despite the great heat. Thor did not have to direct him. Maybe he had traveled all the way to the core before, despite the terrible warmth, despite being himself a frost giant. 

Perhaps he even knew what they would find. Thor had wondered. The Aesir had discovered it upon their arrival, but Loki might have learned the truth about Jotunheim as a child, even. 

_And then you gifted us this place_ , Thor thought. _And like all your gifts, brother, it was a double-edged thing._

But Thor could not be sure Loki did know what was at the core. The Jotnar did not go in for scientific pursuits, and it had taken much analysis by the last few great minds of Asgard — and great they were, for men like Sten had not always been barrelmakers — before they had realized what they were dealing with here, _who_ they were dealing with. 

Loki reacted with confusion. Thor guessed that it was not simply the sight of the burning, tortured star-giant, its huge hunched body curled in on itself, its open mouth trapped in a soundless scream, its eyes like great fiery pits. It was also the succession of catwalks and coils that surrounded Ymir. There was iron here in abundance, and more besides. To cool the creature, they needed all the resources of Jotunheim, not merely those the Jotunn noticed had gone missing. Thor's people had constructed a false winter for the beast, made of clockwork gears of copper, tubes of mole-bear bone to trap the creature's liquid light blood and turn it to cold vapor. Even the Snorli-wings had a use, reconfigured by a clever Aesir engineer into a fan, one which could not help Ymir, not at all, but which most assuredly did help the dedicated men and women who kept watch over the pained creature.

"What are you—" Loki began. "I don't understand."

"He burns, Loki, and with him so does Jotunheim."

He? She? The Allspeak converted all frost-giants to _he_ , and yet it was only through seeing Ymir for the first time that Thor had learned how inadequate this was for a creature meant to be both. Male and female, fire and ice. Or he _had_ been both. Ymir was failing, the fire cancerously consuming him, radiating out to poison the rest of the planet.

"Please, believe me when I say we seek only to help him," Thor said. "We did not do this to him."

The burning had been well underway when the Asgardians had arrived, and Thor did not want his people blamed for it.

But neither did he want another world lost. The truth was, they had discussed leaving Jotunheim for Midgard, when it became clear that Ymir was only getting hotter, and with him, the rest of the ice realm. But Thor had argued that they should stay, that they should try to save this place. 

Loki's place.

"I know it's not you," Loki said, blinking again, from surprise or irritation or perhaps just too much light. "It's always been Ymir that the sun pools emanate from, you know. He has always, all my life, slowly burned away his way to the surface. Ever since we lost the Casket."

Ah. Thor had wondered, and yet a part of him had hoped this was not the case. That it had not been, in the end, Asgard that had done the damage to this place. But he took solace, at least, in the fact that what was left of Asgard was trying to fix it.

Though now Loki's words caught up with him.

"So you knew?" Thor said. "You knew that Jotunheim is dying?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki for the past three hundred years: starting wars, writing sexy drawerfic, fucking his way across Sakaar.  
> Thor for the past three hundred years: literally trying to solve Jotunheim's climate change problem.
> 
> Next chapter: fight!


	10. The Trial of the King

Thor actually wanted to _save_ this miserable, backwater ice rock. 

“How could I see that creature in such pain, know what doom he brings to the rest of your people, and not want to help?” Thor demanded, his voice rising and echoing off of the tunnel around them. 

“First of all, let me disavow you of the notion that Ymir feels anything like pain,” Loki said. 

He had a headache coming on, and it wasn’t just from all the excessive light and heat. Though he had backtracked away from Ymir, back to where it was cooler, he still felt burning hot and stifled. Thor's penchant for heroism seemed to have that effect on him.

"I saw my own realm consumed by flame," Thor was saying, dangerously. "My father and I gave the order for it to burn. And you — you have known all along that Jotunheim would face the same, and have done nothing?"

But it was unclear to Loki what he could have done, even assuming he would have wanted to do anything. Thor would not have grown up with the tales of Ymir, but Loki had and so Loki had always known that the situation was hopeless. Great Ymir, the largest, noblest, stupidest giant of all, had once given half of his flesh to make the surface of Jotunheim. The winter half, specifically. Loki had always imagined him splitting down the middle, his burning star-self peeling off from his frigid ice-self. Then that ice-self had split into three, forming the first frost giants: the All-Winter. Then _they_ had fucked among themselves and spawned the various lines of giants, and after — oh, several millennia more of stupid frost giants fucking and interbreeding and spreading little lines of snow-magic everywhere — there had come modern Jotunheim. With powerful, ancient fire magic at its core, and freezing magic coating its surface. 

But the All-Winter had let Laufey convince them to put their magic, the all-powerful magic of that first winter, into the Casket, so that Laufey might make a weapon of it. And then Laufey had lost that Casket to Odin. 

"You let your trauma addle your mind," Loki told Thor now. "This is not Asgard, Thor. This is a winter realm without any true winter left."

Every frost giant had a bit of winter, of course. Or else they would not be frost giants. But they were foolishly-designed and vain creatures, creatures whose ice-magic was not used for the public good, but was instead directed towards keeping them larger, greater, taller than tall. Loki supposed that, if they were a realm of runts, as he was, they might brim with enough winter to combat Jotunheim's decline. But Jotunheim had never been a realm of runts, a realm for runts. To be small on Jotunheim was usually a disgrace, as Loki well knew. 

"This is your home," Thor was saying, shaking his head. "How could you — this is your _home_."

Loki leaned back against a burning-hot wall of rock, pulling ice from his bones and letting it sink into the rest of him. He crossed his arms. His next words were very clipped and deliberate, but honest too. An honesty that burned worse than the tunnel they were standing in. 

"I have no home, Thor."

Not Asgard, which had never wanted him, which had only wanted him for a tool. And not Jotunheim, which had spat on him and hunted him for sport, which had never been so lovely and shining as Asgard, anyway. 

Looking upon Frigga’s tapestry had made this clear to him, and he thought ought to have made it clear to Thor. Jotunheim was no home, was a paltry gift given to the Aesir by a revenge-seeking trickster, a blue-skinned, sharp-faced runt who had no business being a hero. But in this dying realm they did things at sixes-and-sevens. Even its once-grand Aesir did. Here, Thor was a villain and Loki New Asgard's champion. Here, Loki dined and schemed like a prince, and Thor worked his days away in the core, in service to Ymir of all things. 

"You have no loyalty," Thor spat out now. " _That_ is what you lack, brother!"

"Yes, insult me," Loki said silkily. "I, who will decide your fate with the All-Winter—"

"Do you think I care for the testimony of a coward who will not even defend his realm?"

"You should," Loki snapped. 

He _should_. Until now, Thor had been furious, Loki coolly calm. But this enraged him.

Loki had not been a coward when he had stood starving before the Allfather's shining court, the Allfather's shining son, and refused to be called anything less than a prince, despite the tasks demanded of him. Loki had not been a coward when he had brought Thor the very hammer that had made Thor a hero of Asgard, when he had crawled his way out of hold of the dwarves with his lips sewn shut. Loki had not been a coward when he had stood before the Allfather that last time, shaking, knowing full well the bitter deal the Allfather had sought to wrangle from the Norns, and had _refused_ —

Black, bitter hate filled him, coursed alongside the ice in his bones. 

"Do you think it is wise to cross me, brother?" he told Thor. "You are nothing here. You are the monster that lurks in the Ironwood."

Thor hit the wall behind him so hard that he dislodged shards of burning rock. Loki flinched. Fear joined the hate, the combination so familiar as to be intoxicating. Here was the Thor Loki had known, the Thor Loki had lusted over and despised and immortalized. 

Despite his flinch, and despite the rage on Thor's face, he continued.

"Oh, yes, hit me," he said. "Hit me. But know this: my weapons are greater than yours for once. My realm may be dying, but yours is already dead. And you, like an imbecile, let me trade you another dying realm in its stead, didn't you?"

He smiled; he couldn't help it. Loki's schemes were often haphazard, he often planned only as far as the next immediate step, but this one — _this_ one had worked out perfectly. He had just not been able to see it until now.

"I told Helblindi to make you his servant," Loki said, twisting the knife. "For a year. I had no idea that you would choose to make yourself Ymir's servant, Jotunheim's servant, for a full _three hundred_ —"

He was laughing so hard now that Thor's blow caught him by surprise, left him sprawling on the hot floor of the tunnel. Loki felt more surprise than pain, but then a half-second later the pain came. He blinked into it. He could not say he was happy to have been hit, but at least it made more sense than the kissing.

And Thor, bless him, loomed over Loki looking stricken, as though he could not understand what had brought them to this point.

"Ah, there he is. Angrboda, the brutal beast in the Ironwood," Loki crooned. 

He was pleased to see pain written on Thor's face, twisting those handsome features into something at once both vulnerable and threatening. 

-

For once, an encounter with Thor did not leave Loki pathetically grasping for counsel from En Dwi. This encounter, after all, had actually made sense. So Loki did not mope afterwards. Instead, he went to a party.

It was little Magni's nameday. As the party was hosted by Magni's mother, Thor was conveniently not invited. Loki, as the current object of Jarnsaxa's flattery, very much was. 

His face was mottled with bruises from Thor's blow and from striking the floor of the tunnel. Frigga had long-ago taught him spells to speed the healing of such things, but he shied away from those, and used instead an illusion-spell she had also taught him. This left him seemingly unhurt, while still letting him revel in great blooms of pain every time he pressed his fingers to his cheekbone. If this seemed odd to Byleistr, who accompanied him down to the stables before he left for the party, Byleistr did not say.

"Frigga says you left New Asgard very suddenly," he said instead. "Has something happened?"

It was strange to Loki, the concern his brother had for Asgard's Dowager Queen. Not so strange as to make Loki want to interfere. If he had learned that the affection ran the opposite way, that Frigga had foolishly given her heart to a frost giant bureacrat, perhaps he would have sought to make trouble. But he did not care if Byleistr loved a woman so wise and good — loving Frigga was easy as breathing, and at least gave the brothers something in common beyond their shared antipathy for Laufey and general relief at having murdered him.

"Thor has learned that I am a scheming serpent, which you'd think he would have learned long ago," was all Loki told Byleistr now, as a stable-slave brought forth the great golden swan Jarnsaxa had sent to transport him to the Ice Islands. 

The swan trilled some shrill little swan-songs when it saw Loki. Loki frowned. That sort of thing was bound to make the journey to the Islands long and irritating.

"Does Thor know the full extent of it?" Byleistr asked, nodding his thanks at the stable-slave and then helping Loki himself onto the gaudy beast. He did not ask this in a condemning tone. Only in a pensive one. Still, the question was strange.

Maybe Byleistr was asking if Thor knew Loki was a murderer. If Thor knew Loki was a warmaker, stirring entire realms into trouble. Byleistr was himself somewhat conflict-averse and boring. 

At Loki's sharp glare, Byleistr clarified the question.

"He does not need to," he told Loki. "That is all that I mean. You do not need to share every sordid thing you have done with him. I only wonder how deep into his confidence he and his mother might have taken you, if you hadn't had this argument."

Loki's hands twisted the swan's reins. For an instant, he wondered too. A day ago, Thor had reached for him like a lover. A week ago, Thor had pressed kisses across his chest. Two weeks ago, Thor had cupped his jaw, pulled him in, and told him it was Loki he wanted.

Long ago, when Loki had been little more than Odin's slave, he had stood before the Norns. Once. Only once. Even Odin would not have chanced sending Loki to them more than once. They were more frightening than the All-Winter, shorter on patience. Their laws were theirs, and not to be questioned by frost-giant runts.

_But they are not immutable,_ one had cackled. Verdandi or Skuld, Loki thought, though he had not been able to tell them apart. _What would be the fun in not introducing some chaos and chance? So now we weave two threads, and we have not selected which one we shall use. This weaving, even_ we _have not yet decided how it ends. Does that not relieve you, little winter?_

It had almost relieved him then. Now, however, he could see again two weavings. One was the thread of those kisses with Thor, a foolish dream where Thor was every bit as obsessed with Loki as Loki was with him. The Norns had not chosen that thread, clearly. Loki could not blame them. Such a weaving would have made an illogical picture, no matter how badly the most desperate, sentimental corners of Loki wanted it.

"I suppose I'm no longer so indispensable to Thor as I was," Loki said, mouth twisting into a smile as he contemplated his next lie. "Never fear, brother. It only strengthens my resolve to do right by Jotunheim."

-

Then, the party. 

It was the first day of the month of grey sleet, a mere six days before little Magni's fate was to be decided, and yet to view the feast in his honor was to know that Jarnsaxa was very confident in the outcome. Would a parent about to lose his child to a monster set forth so many courses of snow owl, frost chicken in ice syrup, winter herring in bitter corn stew? Would he fill his palace with ice sculptures of himself, each lovelier than the last? Would he ply his guests with swan racing, with games of Finfar and Farfin?

Yes, little Magni himself was nowhere to be found. But this was not because Jarnsaxa lacked devotion.

"My darling!" Jarnsaxa said, when Loki brought up Magni's name. "Such an innocent, such a sweet. The very light of my life!"

Jarnsaxa had invited Loki to lounge with him on a magnificent couch at the head of his feasting table, a couch all coated in golden-silver feathers. It had genuine giant swan legs for legs. Jarnsaxa absentmindedly plucked one of the feathers and danced it over his long, lovely arms, tracing the gold paint patterns there. "But, you know, he screams very much and would upset the guests. So he's on the Isle of Evergreens for today."

There were four Ice Islands: the Isle of Fog, the Isle of Glaciers, the Isle of Evergreens, and the Barren Isle. Jarnsaxa's family owned all four, as well as all the other inhabitants of the Islands, various sub-clans of slaves, bastard get who they traded to the other noble families for coin and power.

Loki supposed that made him and Jarnsaxa cousins. He frowned. He had told himself that he was putting off Jarnsaxa's invitations because Jarnsaxa was irritating, but it was more than that. They _were_ similar, him and Jarnsaxa, possibly blood relations, only Loki was the sort of blood that you hid away in the shadows until it could produce a useful profit for you.

So too with Laufey. So too with Odin, when he had brought Loki into his family. 

For an instant, Loki had the powerful urge to run Jarnsaxa through. He poked listlessly at his herring stew instead.

Jarnsaxa surveyed his guests, the great table surrounded on all sides by drunken, carousing, merrymaking giants, some petting each other, some stuffing their faces, some raucously laughing, some falling to blows. Then his large crimson eyes turned on Loki, his gaze a searching thing. 

"You are not enjoying yourself. Deep in thought, my prince? Over the All-Winter, perhaps?"

Loki let his teeth show. The All-Winter was the last thing he worried about. Perhaps he would abandon this fetid, dying rock, make for Sakaar, and then Thor and Jarnsaxa could wrestle with the All-Winter themselves.

He did not say this, however. He pressed a finger again to his cheek, letting the ache and bitterness remind him of Thor.

"I wonder at you, Lord Jarnsaxa. That you were married to the Asgard-King."

Jarnsaxa purpled beautifully. His slender hands came up to dab at his eyes, all of his bangles jingling.

"Seduced! You have seen how handsome he is, and believe me, when he puts his assets to work, it is difficult not to shiver with the pleasure of it."

Loki's hand tensed. He realized that he had summoned an ice dagger. Perhaps he _would_ run Jarnsaxa through. 

But no, that would solve Thor's troubles too easily. 

"He ruts like a beast, I'm sure."

Jarnsaxa looked piqued at the insinuation that he would ever sleep with anything beastlike. 

"Oh no! He is very practiced! Very elegant! You would never know how monstrous his inner self is."

_Practiced_ and _elegant_ had not been the Thor Loki had gotten. Loki had gotten something rather more desperate, more coarsely loving. Something that had delighted in fumbling with him. He could not tell whether this meant he was luckier, or Jarnsaxa was. 

He had little time to think on it. Jarnsaxa's beautiful fingers danced on his thigh.

"It was foolish of me to give away my heart so easily," Jarnsaxa said. "But surely you know what it is, to be small and yet well-born, to have so few you can mate with who are at your station."

Those fingers were an invitation, and for a moment Loki thought of what might follow. They were on the Isle of Fog, the wisps and lovely curls of it trawling along the floor, threatening to crawl up the sides of the very table. Jarnsaxa would make an enticing sight, a slender blue form leading Loki into that fog until they found a bed. And then Loki could have him, or could slide a dagger between his ribs, or both. Loki had had sexual encounters that involved both. Loki was an erstwhile Sakaarian, and there was no pleasure that he would not take for himself. 

Instead, he touched his cheek again and let the pain bloom.

-

He did not abandon Jotunheim for Sakaar, as he did not want to give Thor the satisfaction of truly behaving like a coward. Indeed, to let Thor win at anything seemed intolerable again. It was almost comforting, to be back to his old hate, but for how it made Loki feel snappish and malaised. Or rather, how bitter malaise returned to him. He had not even realized that he had been feeling lighter, better, until things returned to normal and he felt desperately unhappy again.

He spent his days feasting like a prince, with Byleistr's merchant kin, with the giants of the snow-wastes, with Thrym's clan. Courted at every turn. But he did not feel courted. Most nights he fingered himself desperately, thinking of the heavy weight of Thor's cock in his mouth, what it would be like to have that thick length plunging into his cunt. When he greedily resorting to reading back passages in _The Wicked Brother_ , he knew he had to do something to destroy Thor utterly. Perhaps if Thor was to lose everything, then it would not matter that the universe was set to rights and he thought Loki low. Perhaps then, finally, Thor would be so debased that Loki could stop thinking of him.

And Loki finally, finally had the power to destroy him. It would be so _easy_ to enflame the All-Winter against Thor. They hated the Aesir already for the loss of the Casket.

But he did not wake feeling powerful and certain, the day of the hearing. His head was pounding again, and _now_ he wanted to sink into his pool and summon En Dwi and demand attention, but there was no time for it. He had less than an hour to get to the temple for the hearing.

He took a mole-bear. There was no rule that said you had to walk the Snaer, only that you could not use magic to climb it, for the All-Winter were jealous creatures who so mourned the loss of their own winter magics that they could not bear to know others still had theirs. Strictly speaking, to even work ice near the temple was a great affront, but Loki had always read the magic prohibition in the laxest manner possible, preferring to believe that it applied only to how one chose to travel up the mountain. The weather today was so balmy and pleasant as to feel skin-crawling, and he did not skimp on cooling himself enough to keep from sweating.

Still, he was not at his best when he arrived at the temple. Nearly a week of sleepless nights had seen to that, and he had not had the wherewithal to adorn himself with fur or feathers, to attend to his hair. But if it was a gangly, unkempt creature that stalked before the All-Winter on this day, then at least it was not one without a sense of theater. He had remembered to bring his helm, to throw on the fine green leathers he had nearly left on Sakaar. He smiled as he strode into the packed temple, hands outstretched, mouth bared in a smile.

"Honored forebears!!"

"Little Winter," rumbled the three heads rising from the floor, no longer slack-jawed and sleeping, but now fully awake in their terrible grey glory. "Little Winter, you return!"

Their voices were so loud they shook the very foundations. Above Loki, set into the temple walls, were gallery upon gallery of watching giants. He caught sight of Thrym, in the balconies reserved for the giants of the chrysoprase caves. Helblindi slumped in the royal balcony, Byleistr a smaller, more proper form beside him. Jarnsaxa was not in the balcony reserved for the lords of the Ice Islands, but rather in the supplicants' box to the left of the three great heads.

Thor, naturally, was in the cage of the accused. 

Loki himself had occupied the cage at least once, when he had become a kinslayer. Possibly twice, for as a babe Laufey had brought a claim against him for daring to live when his bearer would have cursed him to die. Either way, the cage held little sway over Loki. He did not fear it, as other giants did.

And yet he felt something in him twinge painfully, worse than touching his bruised cheek. He could not explain it. He could not even see Thor's face to confirm that it was Thor that was doing this to him, for Thor stared straight ahead, expressionless and brave, as the hot breath of the three great heads bore down on him. 

Drifa, Fannlaug, and Groke had been magnificent once. Or at least large, blue, and terrifying, which on Jotunheim often amounted to the same thing. But now they were old, their magic ripped from them. The blue of their skin had faded to the color of dirty snow, and their massive eyes rolled horribly in their heads. Drifa's tongue lolled out periodically, long and fleshy, so that it slapped the ice floor. Fannlaug, the closest to Jarnsaxa, made loud, wet motions with his mouth, chewing at nothing in particular, or possibly just massaging his gums, for his huge teeth had fallen out long ago and been set into the very walls around them as respectful decoration. 

Only Groke seemed close to hale, retaining some baby-fine hair on his grey head, some spark in his dull pink eyes. Groke had always been the true voice of the All-Winter, the one who seemed closest to reason.

That voice, however, had to pause between each word, for he was so large his massive brain worked very slowly. "We have called the royal line to give testimony in this case. We are pleased the royal line sends Loki."

Drifa's horrible tongue snapped momentarily into his gaping mouth, so that he too could speak. "Avenger of our lost Casket!"

"Stolen!" lisped Fannlaug. "Our winters, all gone!"

Whereupon they all began wailing, as they were likely to do when this topic arose. Indeed, this was why the other giants preferred to let them slumber. Wailing from the All-Winter always shook the temple, shook the very mountain, and it was all Loki could do to keep from falling flat on his face in front of them as the floor heaved. Jarnsaxa did fall over, as did several giants in the balconies. Thor's cage swung dangerously and he had to throw his arms out to the bars to steady himself.

Loki had not seen the other Asgardians anywhere, but he had no doubt that Frigga would not leave Thor to face this alone, and so he hoped for her sake that her balcony did not shake too much. He hoped, too, that she'd been sensible enough to leave Thrud at home. Even Jarnsaxa was not so stupid as to drag a child before the All-Winter. 

"I also come to speak of the matter of the iron reserves," Loki shouted now, over the wailing. It was best to cut off the All-Winter before they got too deep into it, or else they would quake and shriek all day. It took a few moments before his words sunk into their minds, but eventually they quieted. Drifa's tongue slapped back out onto the floor.

"More theft from the Aesir," rumbled Groke. "More wickedness."

But now Thor, the fool, cried out. "I would speak in defense of Asgard over that!"

The All-Winter erupted into more wails and shrieks, spittle flying from their terrible mouths.

"You do not speak!"

"You are accused!"

"Aesir! Guilty! Thief of our winters!"

Loki was quite sure someone — if not him, then at least one of the clerks — had told Thor to keep his mouth shut before the All-Winter. On Jotunheim, you were guilty until deemed innocent, and had no right to your own defense. 

He hastened to cover Thor's blunder despite himself.

"Please, honored ones! My brother gave the Aesir the Lands Below, most lawfully. I am before you now only to help you determine if they may make use of its iron, and for what purpose they do so."

The All-Winter's six eyes rolled horribly as they processed this.

"Foolish to invite the Aesir here," Groke rumbled, after a few minutes. "Foolish. Now there is a problem with the iron. Now there is a problem with a child."

Loki tried not to notice the way Thrym leaned forward eagerly at the mention of the iron, Jarnsaxa at the mention of the child. This moment was not for Thrym and Jarnsaxa. It was _his_ moment, his to savor, his to destroy Thor with. Groke's eyes were fixed on him again, the ancient giant trusting Loki to give him the words, the reasoning necessary to justify finding against the Aesir.

"Speak for me, Little Winter," Groke commanded. "Silver is your tongue, great is your magic. Groke blesses you. You may speak."

Loki smiled. Opened his mouth.

Stopped.

Every giant on Jotunheim had their attention fixed on him. Byleistr was nearly leaning over his balcony and Jarnsaxa clutched a silken handkerchief in his box. Thrym jingled slightly in his excitement — Loki could hear all those rings and bracelets from here. And the delightfully wicked plan had unfurled itself before Loki all week, the decision to damn Thor utterly. Perhaps he would do it. He knew he could do it. He had done worse.

Stupidly, instead he searched the galleries for Frigga. Part of him railed against this, for if he saw Frigga, he _knew_ he would be lost, pathetically unable to see his own will done at the cost of hurting her. But when he found her, saw her in the very highest balcony, he felt only an odd relief.

"Would you have me speak first of the iron, or the child?" he asked Groke. 

He had meant to wrench Magni from Thor, then cast all the Aesir as warmongers, perhaps. He did not know what he had meant. He did not know what he planned to say anymore, but he did know that the order of it did not matter so much.

When he looked up at Thor now, Thor no longer had his back to him. He stared down at Loki now, at Loki watching his mother, with a slight frown on his lips. All that handsome attention was Loki's, utterly Loki's. 

He allowed himself to savor it, although he did not deserve it.

"Iron," rumbled Groke. "What care we for some worthless half-breed child?"

Thor hit the bars of his cage. 

"Have a care! That is my son!"

The All-Winter began shrieking and clamoring again, massive heads swaying on their veiny grey necks. This time Loki crouched low, the better to keep his balance. He caught sight of Jarnsaxa doing the same and looking smug. Of course. The All-Winter did not care for the child, and so they would hand the babe to the only party that did not offend them by his very presence. Jarnsaxa had won this battle long before Loki had appeared on the scene. 

"I know what they are doing with the Ironwood!" Loki shouted, this time managing to calm the All-Winter rather more quickly than before. This time it was easy, for an icy, waiting silence spread over the temple. Now Thrym was leaning so far out of his balcony in anticipation that it was a wonder he did not fall.

"They do wickedness," rasped Groke. "They steal. They plan to make war. They will take all that is left. Tell me, child. Confirm it."

Loki felt himself growing irritated. He did not like it when others tried to wrangle him into telling stories for them, not even if they were some of the oldest and purest giants on the planet. No, Loki lied and told stories for one person: himself. 

"They are engaged in the business of saving this realm," he said, and delighted in hearing shock spread throughout the room. "They take the iron to cool our core, to stop the spread of the sun pools and the heat that is overtaking us, and to save us all."

Although the All-Winter was back to screaming now, this time Loki did not look at them. He looked at Thor instead, at Thor looking at him. Thor should not have seemed majestic or handsome now, very literally brought to his knees by the swaying of the cage, but he did. And now Loki found one key difference between Thor and Angrboda, one he had not noticed before.

Angrboda was handsomest when he was most cruel. Loki had decreed that. But Thor was handsomest when he was, as now, soft with relief, satisfaction, and a hint, perhaps, of surprise.

_You have very low standards for me, if you truly thought I would lie about this,_ Loki mouthed at him, though he suspected Thor could not see. _Shame on you._

Loki had thought Loki would lie. But then Loki had never had very high standards for Loki. 

Now, however, Groke was hissing at the others to quiet. 

"They cannot fix what they did," he rumbled.

Loki goggled at him. "What they did?"

"They took our Winters," rumbled Groke. "This is why we die!"

"Thieves!" lisped Fannlaug again. 

Drifa's tongue snaked up and smacked the cage, making Thor careen dangerously enough that a few of the giants in the nearby balcony screamed.

"Odin took the Casket," Loki snapped. "Odin stole your winters. Not Thor. Thor is not his father—"

"But he shall pay," said Groke. "We find against the Aesir, against the accused—"

"No!" Loki shouted. His voice was not nearly powerful enough to drown out Groke's, but he gave it his best try anyway. "Are you truly so stupid? I am telling you: it is Thor and the Aesir who are attempting to _save_ us—"

"We condemn Thor to die," said Groke, terrible and final. 

" _No_!" Loki shouted again. He felt so thwarted that he could have taken apart this entire wretched temple, this entire wretched realm, if only Thor and Frigga were not currently on it. 

Only Frigga — where was Frigga? When Loki searched for her, desperate to confirm that she yet stood tall, that she was not wholly destroyed by the threat to Thor, he could not find her. She was no longer in her balcony. All around him, the giants were erupting into a frenzy of discussion: about Thor, about Loki, about the iron reserves and the threat to their realm, which clearly many of them were patently refusing to believe in, despite the All-Winter confirming it. But Loki did not care about that. He wanted only to find Frigga. 

He did not spot her until she was making her way deliberately across the ice floor. He ran to her.

"You should leave, my queen," he hissed. "Let me deal with this—"

He had no idea how he was going to deal with this. He could see Byleistr trying to scramble down from the royal balcony. He hoped Byleistr knew how to deal with this.

Frigga put a calm hand on his arm. Then she spoke.

"And if we can bring back your Ancient Winters?" she shouted, loud enough to be heard over all the commotion. 

Three All-Winter heads swiveled, focused in on her. Silence again fanned out over the room.

"If you can bring back our winters, then your king may live," rumbled Groke. "Your people may stay. If you cannot, he will die. You will all die. We will give the order to our children to kill you. We will do this, we think, because—"

A very long pause. Groke seemed to be trying to speak around a hideous, gap-toothed, too-long smile.

"—you will fail. Only Little Winter can _truly_ restore to us all of the Ancient Winters."

This was news to Loki. This was news to Frigga, too, to go by her look of dismay. Her hand tightened on his arm, as if to hold him back, but this was at least an announcement that would stay the Jotunn, keep them from tearing Thor to shreds and waging immediate war on Thor's people. Loki took advantage of it. 

"I will do so, then!" he said.

It was only after he had said this that he realized he was promising something which was, in fact, impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to post on Thursday, but this week has been too hellish to properly edit a chapter, until now. -___- Hope this longish chapter makes up for it, and apologies for the wait!
> 
> Next chapter: if the winters are dead and gone, then with the dead and gone ye shall find them! (a.k.a. Thor's not so excellent reunion with a certain queen of Hel.)


	11. Winter in Hel

Frigga was resolute in her conviction that they could bring back the Ancient Winters. Or at least that she could. 

"You'll do no such thing," hissed Prince Byleistr. "It is too dangerous for you to go! And the All-Winter has decreed that the task shall be Loki's."

"Then I shall go with him," Frigga said. "Someone must. It is certainly too dangerous for him to go alone."

"I don't want you there in that case," Loki said. 

He seemed testy after their flight from temple to palace. Literal flight. Thor had seized Loki and his mother just as a furious Jarnsaxa had been about to sink his nails into Loki's eyes, and then hastily used his thunder abilities to get them safely here, prohibition on magical traveling be damned. Loki leaned against one great ice wall now, arms crossed, slightly apart from the queen, Thor, and his brothers. 

Frigga raised an eyebrow at him. Then her gaze danced from Loki to Thor to Byleistr to King Helblindi, who had lumbered his way home with Byleistr and who appeared to be bored by the ad hoc council that had sprung up between the two royal families.

"Let Loki go," Helblindi said slowly, closing his eyes and stretching out on a great couch in his receiving room, to signal that for him was the end of it. "Loki solves things. Sometimes."

"Sometimes?" Loki bristled.

After the events of the past week, Thor thought that 'sometimes' was a fair assessment, actually. But still. If the task was dangerous — and it must have been dangerous indeed, if Frigga had not offered it up as a solution the moment they'd discovered Ymir burning Jotunheim from the inside out — then Thor did not wish Loki to go alone, either. 

"I will go with him," he said.

He had not spoken until now, robbed of words by Loki's defense of him. Loki was so very good at letting Thor down that Thor had forgotten, quite stupidly, how wonderful it felt to have his brother's unflinching support. So what was there to say?

_I cannot_ know _you will do good, but when you do it is better than anything else._

That seemed too private a thought for such mixed company. So until now he had simply stood aside and let Loki and his mother admonish each other cryptically, Frigga too uncharacteristically nervous to come out with whatever she felt would let them revive the Casket, Loki too solicitous of the Dowager Queen to admit that he thought she was frankly mad. Thor himself wondered if she was. 

The Casket of Ancient Winters had burned along with the rest of Asgard. Thor knew this. His mother knew this. When Odin had descended into the vault and merged the crown of Surtur with the eternal flame, all of the vault’s treasures had been destroyed, among them the Casket. 

"I do not want either of you to go," Frigga said now, twisting her hands. "But if you go together, you will at least look out for each other."

"Where are we going?" Thor asked.

His mother stared at him like she had thought him smart enough to guess and was now slightly disappointed at Thor not living up to her expectations.

"The Ancient Winters of Jotunheim perished in the fall of Asgard. You must go where all things go when they perish: to the realms of the dead."

Here Loki started.

"The Ancient Winters were not _alive_ —"

"Are you certain of that?" Frigga retorted. She strode across the great receiving room to Loki, crossing the gulf that had sprung up between him and the others. When she reached him, she grabbed his hands without preamble.

"Do you think your magic is a dead thing?" she said. "I thought I taught you better than that. Even as a child, Loki, your power was a dancing, living thing inside you. I knew that the moment I met you. Winter magic is as alive as anything else, and if the Ancient Winters are not with us, it is because they were snuffed out as surely as the rest of Asgard's dead. So they shall be found where the dead are found."

Loki stared down at their joined hands for a moment. "Hel."

"Valhalla, surely," Thor countered.

He had no interest in going to Hel. If he went, he was not certain what dark things he might do to its queen.

Loki snorted. "Your father would not let anything of Jotunheim's intrude on his perfect, heroic feasting-hall. And I doubt the Ancient Winters perished gloriously in battle — and what does it matter? How will we even _get_ there?"

Frigga gave his hands a squeeze.

"I have crossed to the lands of the dead. Centuries ago. I went to the base of the world tree and plucked the spell that would let me visit. I have a seed of it still, and I'm older and wiser and know better how to use that seed."

Truly, only Thor's mother could speak of such disturbingly powerful magic as though it was nothing more than a hydrangea bush she'd uprooted and replanted in her garden. But this seemed to make sense to Loki, who gave her a sharp look.

"Let us try visiting Hel, then," he said softly. "It will be no matter, as long as you are the one to send me there."

Thor had no idea what he meant by that. Apparently neither did Byleistr.

"Loki," Byleistr said sharply. "A word." 

He dragged Loki off into a corner, past Helblindi, now fast asleep and snoring like the day's events meant little to him. Likely they didn't, since Helblindi's attitude towards his realm was a somewhat distracted one. This left Thor and his mother staring at each other across the room. Thor crossed to her. Frigga was more grim than he had ever seen her before.

"Fear not. I will look after him and him after me," Thor murmured, pulling her in close and resting his head on her hair. It was an odd thing to promise when he had been furious with Loki not a day ago, but it felt right. 

Despite the death sentences he and New Asgard had received, Thor could not help but feel optimistic at the day's turn. Loki, for all his schemes and his lack of caring for Jotunheim, had stood before all of the ice realm and spoken on Thor's behalf. It was like something broken was knitting itself back to wholeness before Thor's very eyes.

"Send us to Valhalla, and we will start our search there. Better to begin searching with father than with Hela—"

No. Perhaps not better for Loki, so Thor swallowed the end of that sentence, and it was well that he did. Frigga pulled back and looked him in the eyes.

"You will have to go to both Valhalla and Hel," she said. "When we first discovered Ymir, I theorized that it was the loss of the Casket that was letting his heat overtake the planet. I went to Byleistr, who confirmed it, and then I returned to New Asgard and scried for the winters. Winters, as in plural, Thor. While you _will_ find Ancient Winter in Valhalla, one of the winters rests in Hel with your sister. So you must go to Hel, then to Valhalla. Once you have all the winters, their power will allow you to pass from Valhalla to the world tree in the land of the living."

Thor tried and failed to imagine how it was that one Ancient Winter could have died heroically and the other not, and decided it probably didn't matter. Both he and Loki would have their own tests to face. That seemed fair, at least. A fair enough bargain for his life, for the future of New Asgard, for pitiful Ymir and dying Jotunheim.

"And Thor," his mother said now, "you must be careful, not only in Hel but in Valhalla, too. Do not forget that your home is here in the lands of the living."

Thor wasn't sure how he could forget that, but for her sake he promised not too.

"I will not lose myself on this journey," he said. "But how are we to undertake it, mother? And how will we pass from one land to the other?"

For that matter: how would they know the winters when they found them? Thor could not recall anything about the Casket of Ancient Winters or what lay within it, let alone what its contents were supposed to look like. 

Frigga smiled, as though to say, _there._ There _is my smart son._

"I have some ideas," she said. 

-

Frigga's spell did not kill them, but it was a close thing. It had to be a close thing for the spell to work, and so the queen had Loki conjure an icy pool for Thor, a pyre for himself.

Thor's close death was a near-freezing. Loki's a near-burning. Thor could not explain how these things did not kill them, save that through the pain he felt his mother's hand on his shoulder, not holding him beneath the water so much as sustaining him through it. Then, just as his strength failed him, he found himself not freezing at all. He opened his eyes and was staring at Loki, bent over double, wheezing into a large golden ewer of the sort they had once used to ornament the halls of the Asgardian palace. 

Thor blinked. 

It was ornamenting the halls of Asgard’s palace. This was precisely where they were, although the great windows to their left did not show the blue skies of the realm once-eternal. The sky here was black as Jotunheim’s. 

The window hangings, too, were black. The gleaming floor was not pearl-white, but black. The vast columns dotting the hall were similarly, predictably black. One end of the hall met a wall before turning, and a fresco on this wall depicted the predictable decorator responsible for this frankly ugly color scheme: Thor’s sister. 

“I take it she likes black,” Loki said, once he stopped wheezing. 

“She isn’t the most up to date on her interior decorating skills. Father did trap her away from all the latest fads and fashions.”

“Right,” Loki said. “Also, she’s a monster.”

There was that, too. And that reminded Thor of their fight, which now seemed years in the past for all that it had been last week. In the strange black light of Hel, he could make out no bruising on Loki. But perhaps it was there, healed by time, veiled by Loki's illusions. 

Hela was bloodthirsty and unforgivable, but Thor was not himself free of all monstrous impulses. Regret made him reach for Loki. 

“Stop it,” Loki said, jumping back and colliding with the ewer like he thought Thor’s touch would burn him. 

Thor had meant to try and soothe this time. Thor had meant to make it right somehow. Whatever had fractured between them, whatever had fractured in Loki to make him care so little about the fate of Jotunheim, Loki had tried in his own way to mend it by speaking truth to the All-Winter. Thor wanted to meet this action head-on, to do his own part to fix things. 

Loki stared at him for a moment, disgruntled. “If you want to talk, need I remind you that this is not the time—“

“When is the time?”

“When we are not in Hel!”

He had a point there. Thor let it drop, despite the worrying little feeling that he and Loki could be sitting on literal sunbeams without a care in the world, and Loki would still try and dodge whatever they were, whatever made them react to each other with such extremes of behavior. 

Loki sniffed, straightening up. “Your mother said that whatever we seek in the realm of the dead, it is only to be found in what we would most avoid.”

Thor’s mother had said that. Thor had privately felt that this was precisely why old Asgard had been so mistrustful of most kinds of magic, because it insisted on working like that, but he had not raised the complaint with Loki and his mother there. 

“Hela for me, then, and Laufey for you,” Thor said. “One of them is bound to have Hel's winter. Likely Hela.”

“So why even suggest Laufey?” 

“Well, it’s worth checking to see if he has the Ancient Winter while we’re here, for I can’t imagine Laufey made his way to Valhalla. Pardon the aspersion on your bloodline.”

“Pardoned, brother to Hela.”

This only worked as an insult because they had now made it to her fresco, turned to continue down the corridor, and discovered yet more frescoes. Thor’s sister on a black throne, disemboweling enemies. Thor’s sister on an even blacker throne, eating the hearts of her courtiers. That sort of thing. Thor felt a headache coming on. 

“I wish I’d been there for your reunion,” Loki said. “That must have been a sight to see.”

“She’s a little single-minded.”

“Well, the black makes sense now. Really, it brings out all the crimson blood. A stunning effect. There's real artistry in it. She could use a few more statues, though."

"Statues?" Thor said.

"Why go in for frescoes when you could have massive, lifelike statues?"

"I think you've picked the only decorating flaw she _doesn't_ have. Bravo, Loki."

Now they were coming upon what should be the healing halls. What had once been Eir’s domain, when Asgard had existed, when this shadow realm had not been the only thing left. 

But what use had the dead for healing? That could not help them anymore. Thor and Loki stopped short at the great double doors and peered into the black gloom. There were no beds, no soul forge. No Eir striding up to meet them. 

Only a pair of large, vicious eyes, a black mass padding solidly out of the gloom. 

“What is that?” Loki breathed out. 

“Her dog.”

“Oh, she’s a dog person?” Loki said. “Charming.”

Frigga had been clear that they probably could not be killed here. She had also been clear that they could still be hurt. For Thor, this bargain wasn’t a bad one — what was a battle without some scratches? But then she had clarified. 

_I can send you to Hel with an ignoble false death. Once there, a suitably glorious fight can send you to Valhalla. But you must refrain from such a thing until you have found Hel’s winter, for once you have crossed the border to Valhalla, you cannot go back. Hel may well keep you if you try to return a second time._

_Also, Thor, it is very, very important that you not use your thunder. When you do fight, you must lose._

So they should not try to fight the beast. They should not try to fight at all until they had found the winter, and even then, Thor was barred from fighting properly. This left them little recourse but to back away slowly, in tandem, while Fenris advanced. The great slavering muzzle came out of the darkness, then the too-intelligent eyes, then the furred neck. 

At this point, it seemed prudent to turn and run. 

They skidded down the corridors, barreled down great stairs. Hel was so like Asgard that Thor had a moment of nostalgia despite their panicky flight. He and Loki, much younger, had raced through corridors much like these, ducked around that exact plinth, run madcap through these very salons. But as children the game had been theirs, and this time it was Fenris'. The great creature was playing with them, staying always a touch behind, right on their heels, though it could have leapt in front and ended this. 

Loki ended it. Just as they reached a passage that would have taken them down to the stables, Thor heard him make an undignified squawk. He’d tripped. Sometimes he’d done that as a boy too, so eager to keep up with Thor that he became clumsy. 

“Graceless thing,” Thor snarled, less out of anger and more from concern. It did not occur to him to keep running. His body reached to help Loki up before he considered the huge wolf now advancing on them. 

Fenris seemed satisfied. He’d made his prey entertain him, after all. 

“Graceless?” Loki was sputtering, meanwhile. 

“Now is not the time.”

“I don’t insult _you_ for mistakes you cannot help.”

“Yes, you do, and now is not the time.”

The wolf advanced, his claws clacked ominously on the ebony flagstones, the sound echoing off the walls and ceiling. Loki was a finicky thing in Thor’s arms, shoving him off, but all Thor felt was Fenris' hot breath upon them. 

“Now I suppose you’ll blame me that he’s caught us,” Loki muttered, “when you’re the one provoking an argument.”

“You had to go and fall!”

“I didn’t plan to!”

“It doesn’t matter! Let’s stop this foolishness and find a way to lose him!”

“Well, if it’s foolish then know that it’s _your fault_ , and now you’ll probably suggest something stupid like ‘get help’—“

The beast was so close that its spittle smacked them in the face. 

“Let’s do ‘get help,’ then!”

Loki’s reply was scornful. “‘Get help’ won’t work on a _wolf_.”

“ _Then find something that will_ ,” Thor snarled. 

Loki was still moving around in his arms — Thor would not let him go, not when Fenris' massive jaws were inches from them — but now there was purpose to his fidgeting. He made three strange slashes in the air, then curled his fingers around Thor's collar. He pulled them to the wall. _Into_ the wall. They tumbled through what should have been a solid mass, but was clearly no obstacle at all to Loki. Loki's magic buzzed in Thor's brain for a few moments as he struggled to make sense of where they were now. Some sort of darkened, narrow back passage.

Right. Loki knew all the servants' byways of old Asgard.

Thor still held him, felt the sharpness of his elbows, the coolness of his skin. He _did_ want to talk about all that had happened between them, to at least explain why he had hurt Loki. Loki deserved to know why, even if Thor perhaps did not deserve forgiveness. 

He'd been enraged, unpardonably so, by how easily Loki declared himself tied to nothing, not to Asgard, not to Jotunheim, certainly not to Thor. Oh, naturally Loki had always been slippery. Always lied and stabbed and sneaked. But Thor had always wanted to believe that none of this mattered, that Loki was also bound, as Thor was, to act for the greater good. That a part of Loki wanted, as Thor did, to do so together.

"Let me go," Loki snapped.

Thor let him go. But he told himself, privately, that they would talk about all this later.

Out loud, he said, "Do you know where the throne room is?"

"Naturally," said Loki. "Why?"

"Hela may not be into statues, but by the Norns is she into thrones. That's where we'll find her."

"You're almost too eager to see your sister," Loki noted sourly, though Thor was the very opposite of eager when it came to meeting Hela again. He only knew in his bones that this was part of why they had come here. He and Hela had never properly settled things. They had only destroyed Thor's home, his people's home, and though Asgard yet lived, Thor could not help the regret and shame that overcame him when he thought of all they had lost in order to survive.

Partly his fault. Partly Odin's. Mostly Hela's, though. 

He followed Loki through squirrelly passages, up secret stairs. They were in a warren that Thor, as a prince, had never before seen, but Loki strode through like he knew its every nook. The way to the throne room was long and winding, and more than once they had to duck into the palace proper before once again melting into the shadow-passages. Thor could not tell if Loki was deliberately delaying their meeting with the psychotic queen of Hel, or if the way to the throne room was merely a convoluted one.

Soon enough, however, they paused in one of the narrow back halls and Loki ran his fingers up the wall, looking for something.

"It's here," he said.

"How do you know?"

He took Thor's hand and made Thor trace the wall, which seemed very characterless and boring until Thor made out some raised shapes. A raven. A flower. A wolf. A lightning bolt.

It occurred to him that the wolf must mean Hela, and he was going to ask Loki what Loki had made of such a cryptic symbol, back when Asgard had been shining and golden. But then the lightning bolt beneath his fingers _rippled_.

"Stop doing that!" he told Loki immediately.

"Stop doing what?" 

Thor pulled his hand down, but now, even through the darkness, he could see that the very wall was rippling. It was a pool of black, viscous liquid. He and Loki backed away, but before they could get very far a long-fingered hand shot out and grabbed Loki by the throat.

"Boo," Hela said.

-

After Hela pulled them into the throne room and threw Loki out of a palace window, she shoved Thor against a nearby pillar and put a blade to his throat.

"I knew you'd be like this," Thor muttered. The blade did not faze him. Actually, it reminded him of Loki, a bit. "Predictable."

"So are you," Hela said silkily. "Hungering so badly after battle that you decide to pay _me_ a visit? You know, I never did think it was fair that Odin claimed I was the bloodthirsty one."

"I'm not actually here to see you."

"Rude."

She threw him across the room and into another pillar, probably just to show she could. Thor's head collided with the pillar. It left his ears ringing, but as he had not yet found the Ancient Winter, he didn't think it prudent to fight back and risk being transported to Valhalla. After he blinked through the pain, he scanned the room for his quarry.

"The question, I suppose, is what you and your little companion are looking for," Hela said. "Loki, is it?"

"How do you know that?" Thor said. She had never met Loki, and the one upside to her throwing Loki out of the window was that it put Loki firmly beyond her flat malice for now. 

"Please," Hela said. "Do you know how many simpering palace servants I tortured for your whereabouts, back when you and Heimdall were hiding the Bifrost sword from me? You wouldn't believe what came out when I asked them for your secrets."

"That I had a friend, a brother of my heart, dearer to me than you will ever be?" Thor said, struggling up now and making for the throne. Perhaps the winter would be tucked on the throne.

Hela caught him by the hair and threw him into yet another pillar. Pain blossomed across his mind. Bored pain. Norns, but sister was repetitive. 

"That you named 'brother' the man you actually want to _fuck_ , you randy little weirdo."

Had he been that obvious, as a youth? He struggled up again. Now Hela grabbed him by the throat. This time she forced him to his knees so she could look down on him with arrogant sociopathy in her eyes. Another predictable Hela move.

"Tell: why _are_ you visiting? What causes you to risk the realms so?"

"The realms?" Thor forced out. Her nails were digging into his neck.

"Did mother not tell you? When she visited so long ago, bringing all her glorious spring with her, she so upset the rhythms of this this dead place that she left a little fissure between it and the land of the living. Over the centuries it widened, and, well, you saw what happened with enough centuries and careful working on my end. Hela in the world, once again. I wonder if all your vaunted fertlity and thunder will have the same effect as mother's spring."

Well, that explained why he couldn’t use his thunder here. They were powers of life and vitality, certainly strong enough to rip a hole in Hel. Still, Thor managed a smile. 

“You spent centuries scraping away at the boundaries between the realms like a prisoner with a nail file? That's really sad, sister."

This time she threw him into the floor, which hurt even more than being thrown into a pillar. When stars were no longer dancing before his eyes, Thor added, "I think mother will have taken care not to help you this time. She and I both prefer a long-distance relationship with you."

Hela snarled and began tugging him towards the balcony. Thor used the opportunity to cast about for anything that seemed remotely wintry, but there was nothing here but pillars, shadows, and those frescoes done in very poor taste.

"Well, it doesn't matter, does it? As long as you're here, I can torment you," Hela was saying, like she savored the prospect. "How shall we start? Shall we watch as Laufey tears your little lovebird to pieces? He was so dying to see his firstborn again. Let's see if we can spot the action, shall we?"

At the balcony, she pulled Thor up by the hair again. For an instant, he did not want to look, fearing he would see some sort of shadow-Asgard, a blackened and charred mirror to the home they had lost to Hela. But this palace had no nation to accompany it, no land or proper city. Instead, Hel's palace was in the center of a battlefield. Everything was smoke and carnage, trenches and screams. The dead could not be killed again, but no one seemed to have told _them_ that. Thor stared, stupefied, as they hacked at each other and retreated, wailed over injuries that could never heal, bled out endlessly or fought as though they thought it could make a difference.

"Welcome to my realm," Hela said brightly. "Do you like what I've done with the place? I could have made the whole universe so exciting, but you had to go and dash my dreams."

"Oh yes, shame on me," Thor managed. He tried not to think of the possibility that there might be dead Aesir trapped in this endless savagery. Surely, _surely_ all his people made it into Valhalla instead. He could tell from here that that wasn't the case for the frost giants, however. Massive forms pockmarked the landscape, fighting as blindly as the others. 

One was as large as Helblindi. Just as long-faced. Identical, actually.

Loki was nowhere near him. Thor heard Hela make a disappointed sound.

"It seems he's a coward, your little lovebird."

This was enough like what Thor had said not long ago that Thor winced.

"He has a healthy sense of self-preservation."

Hela's tone was conversational, with only the very slightest hint of frustration. "Well, I want him to hurry up and get himself beaten to a pulp. Here — a minor locating spell should help us find him."

She sketched something in the air with the hand that was not currently holding Thor. It became a black wolf that whirled around them, then ran off.

"Alright, come along," Hela said casually, and dragged him after the wolf. This time Thor fought her more actively, but this only made her slam him into walls as she strode along. Hela did this offhandedly, attentions mostly consumed by following the wolf.

"Are you kidding?" she said, when the smoke animal finally evaporated. " _This_ is where he's hiding?"

Thor was somewhat baffled as well. The wolf had led them to the doors of the palace nursery. 

"I cannot read your little magpie," Hela noted, finally letting Thor drop to the ground.

Thor doubted even Loki could read Loki. Thor had assumed _he_ understood Loki well enough, but this was strange even for Loki. There was little reason for Loki to seek the shelter of the nursery. Loki had not, as far as Thor could tell, ever spent any time in the real one. By the time Loki had come to Asgard, Thor had outgrown the nursery by some years, and Odin had seen the space as too fine for their hostage. Loki had been housed in a back room of the stables and then, when Frigga had protested, in a guest room in the apartments of the queen.

Hela kicked the door open. Thor raised himself up in order to follow her into the gloom, a deeper gloom than anywhere else in the palace. This space was particularly perverse, its toys somehow more gruesome-seeming than they should be, its once-sunny tapestries converted into yet more depictions of bloody conquest.

Loki stood over a black cradle in the center of the room. He was half-turned away from them, but Thor still caught the look on his face. Utter relief.

"Oh, is that what you're looking for?" said Hela. "That belongs to me now, I'm afraid."

Loki smiled thinly. "That is where you're wrong. This belongs to Jotunheim."

Then he lifted a swaddled bundle out of the cradle. It wailed not like a child, but like wind and sleet. It was so black and shadowy that coldness seemed to radiate off of it. 

The Ancient Winter. Loki had known where to find it. Just how was unclear to Thor, but Thor did not dwell on it. Hela was already advancing on Loki.

"We can fight now, right?" Thor called out to him.

Loki's smile widened.

They could fight now. Good. Thunder powers or no thunder powers, being near Hela and not trying to beat _her_ into the ground was, well. Hell. 

"But then I guess hell is what we make of it," Thor muttered to himself, before using the element of surprise to grab Hela by the arm and send her slamming through the closest window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gee, it looks like the one place Loki would most avoid is the nursery. I wonder if that will be relevant later. Probably not.
> 
> Next chapter: Thor badgers Loki into actually talking, for once. The experience makes Loki want to actually die. Good thing they're already in the realms of the dead.


	12. The Waiting Realm

One glorious battle later and they were out of Hel, transported to a sun-drenched green valley. 

Since they'd lost a glorious battle, this must be Valhalla. Yet Loki found the scene a disappointing reward for such a high price of entry. While the battle seemed to have invigorated Thor, left him exuberant, all it had done for Loki was convince him that Odin had spawned a child as vicious as the old man himself, a daughter who left little but misery in her wake. Loki's whole body hurt, sprawled as it was in the grass, and not even the comforting cold of the Ancient Winter seemed to improve that. 

He struggled up, batting away at Thor's attempts to help him rise. The winter thrummed in his arms. He could tuck it into a pocket dimension, but for now he didn't want to, just in case it somehow helped lead them to the other winters. So it sat there in his arms, needle-shaped and then shapeless, glimmering clear and then grey-black as a shadow. When Loki blinked down at it, he could not fix it in his mind. It was formless and twisted as the wind, then lovely and punishingly cold as snow on bare skin.

Though, speaking of skin—

"Brother," Thor was saying haltingly, "You—"

"I told you Odin wouldn't want a frost giant in his heaven," Loki snapped.

But it was one thing to suspect it and another to feel himself bleached white-limbed, death-pale. Loki had often felt that his body was a vessel, less a real thing than simply a coiled bit of tension awaiting its next metamorphosis. That was just fine, as long as the metamorphosis was one he chose himself. This time he had gone pale without realizing it. 

He couldn't turn back. He could do other things. He tried several in quick succession: conjuring ice daggers, working an illusion of his Jotunn self over his current self, throwing up some shades. But he couldn't go back to blue. This new place wouldn't let him. So he left the illusion of blueness, purely to spite Odin, and then snapped at Thor. 

"Let's go. We must find your father's feasting hall. I doubt we'll find the remaining winters anywhere else."

Frigga had said that what he sought would be just where he didn't want it. So it would be with Odin.

Thor was looking at Loki as one would look at an animal in a cage, which bothered Loki. He did feel caged without his ability to shift his color, and even more caged at the prospect of meeting Odin again, but he wasn't sure that he wanted Thor to know that. He wasn't sure what he wanted Thor to know. Privately, he felt that Thor knew enough, for now Thor knew the truth: Loki could not, would not see Thor harmed.

That was what had compelled him to save Thor before the All-Winter. Was this why Odin's golden heaven didn't expel him at once? 

"Winters," Thor said now.

"Stop staring at me. There's plenty more here for you to goggle at," Loki replied.

Like the grassy valley, and a little further on a shimmering lake. The whole scenes so green and peaceful that it cried out for a small cottage to complete the picture, the sort of cottage with chickens and goats and underlinens drying on a clothesline. Light poured down on the bright blue waters, and the grass grew to an astonishing height. The mountains that ringed them were green and vibrant, though at the tips they were veined with snowy paths and veiled by picturesque and oddly static mist.

"Winters," Thor said again. 

"Yes. We're looking for the Ancient Winters."

"We already have one," Thor said.

Loki, who not an hour ago had been so idiotically pleased at temporarily saving Thor from the All-Winter and who not two minutes ago had privately thrilled at seeing Thor survive Hela, now felt done with him. 

"We're looking for one winter, because we already have one," Thor said.

"We're looking for _two_ winters, because there are three and we already took the one that was in Hel," Loki corrected.

He couldn't understand why they were talking about this. They should be talking about how time in Odin's realm felt wrong, like a thick jelly. Not a breeze ruffled the grass. The static poppies by the lake were a rich beef-red, dotted with drowsy and unmoving honeybees. Loki far preferred Hel, where the sky was black as Jotunheim's and the realm wore its menace on its sleeve. This place, by contrast, seemed to be hiding something. 

That fit Odin, at least.

"I thought mother said there were two," Thor was saying now, slowly for some reason.

"She didn't say there were two. She only said one was in Hel. Why would there be two, when there are three of the All-Winter?"

Thor blinked at this. Loki, taking advantage of his momentary silence, decided to start walking. He picked a direction at random, as they all might be the direction Odin was in and so they all made him tense, and started for a lovely pine forest at the base of one of the mountains. The grasses and flowers parted around his legs only belatedly, like they needed to be reminded that this was what they should be doing.

"Where are we going to find two?" Thor demanded, starting after him. "Where are we even going to find one, in a place so perfect as this?" 

"Perfect? This tedium? Perfect?"

Here the lake bent to meet the edge of the forest. The mirror-still waters reflected sun, cloud, mist, none of it moving, none of it really real. Thor made a derisive noise.

"You cannot be so fond of chaos that this picture doesn't move you."

"It does move me. It makes me uneasy," Loki said. He didn't like the satisfaction in Thor's tone, like Thor had figured something out about him. Did Thor know how inadequate he felt here? How small and full of dread? Perhaps he did. He must know what it cost Loki to visit Odin's death-kingdom. Still, Loki would prefer not to talk about it. He hurried to change the subject. Heroism. Thor liked heroism. Loki's mad moment of heroism would do. 

"Stop pretending you know the first thing about why I feel the way I feel, when we both know I at least surprised you before the All-Winter, and let's—"

"Oh, are we talking about what happened with the All-Winter now?"

"No," Loki snapped. Perhaps he should have picked a bit of heroism he cared to discuss. 

"How about Ymir, then? How about how you offered us a dying realm, _your_ dying realm, which you apparently care nothing about? How about we talk about how quick you were to volunteer yourself to visit Hel and Valhalla—"

" _No_."

"So it's to be silence until we've found the winters?"

Loki was silent. But he thought he could feel Thor's answering grin. Of course he could feel it. It was the most living thing in this place.

They reached the pine wood and discovered it full of lovely, stagnant green streams and twigs that crackled a half-minute after they stepped on them. Then another valley, just as perfect as the first, but this time the lake was even bluer. Then a green-sea beach, where yet more wild grass grew and where silent and stationary gulls slept on the sand dunes. Then a series of cliffs above a crystal ocean with not a wave to recommend it. 

The only marker of time was Thor, who said, in the wood, "I don't suppose we can talk now?"

Then, in the second valley, "How about now?"

Then, at the beach, "How about now?"

Then, by the cliffs, "How about we talk now?"

"Fine," Loki snapped, when they'd circled back to another pine forest. When had Thor become so cheerfully persistent? The old Thor would have demanded things and Loki would have denied him those things, and that was that. 

Now Loki shifted the Ancient Winter against him, focusing on its soothing cold chaos. Perhaps he could make this discussion go quickly and unpleasantly. Very unpleasantly. Perhaps he could make Thor not want to ask about any of these things again. 

"Let's talk, then, since you're so eager," he began. "I'm sure you'd love to have all my secrets. You'd love to see me humbled on my knees, babbling every truth I've ever hidden from you. You'd love it, because that way you can attach simple explanations your mind can comprehend—"

"Yes, interesting image, no," Thor said, very plainly and without much feeling.

"I never meant to help New Asgard at all. I only meant to torment _you_! And I never thought I'd be roped into helping you with the All-Winter. I never even intended to come back to Jotunheim. I still can't tell why I did it! I was planning to betray you, and didn't, and can't think why I didn't do that either—"

"Maybe you liked my kisses," Thor suggested.

"You kiss like a coarse teenager of barely two hundred."

"So do you, but you suck cock like an intergalactic courtesan," said Thor.

Loki frowned. 

Oh, why did they have to talk at all? Why couldn't they simply get on with their heroic journey? The Thor of the past, brutish and perfect, would have let all their secrets sit and just focused on the heroic journey, rather than humiliate Loki with all this. 

"You're not my first," Loki forced out now. "Though I don't doubt you wanted to be—"

"Did you want to be mine?" Thor asked.

"Yes!"

Actually yes. But, oh, he shouldn't have said it. It seemed that truths were wilder beasts than lies. You couldn't leash truths and trot them out only when you pleased. When they escaped, it was in a stampede.

"Forget that," he said quickly. He wracked his brain for some untruth he could scatter before Thor, to distract him, but for once it was like he could not think up a lie. 

"Hmm. No," Thor was saying in the meantime. "Though this is going in a direction I hadn't anticipated. Loki, _why_ did you want to bring me to Jotunheim just to, as you say, 'torment' me?"

"Don't you know?" Loki forced out. 

He tightened his arms around the Ancient Winter. Now it felt colder than before. He kept it close as he stumbled to a nearby pine. He would lean here, not looking at Thor. Or try to disappear here. Or maybe die here. Any of these options seemed fine.

"I suppose the obvious answer is revenge for how my father used you and for how I let it happen," said Thor, like the violent little stripling he had been would have been able to stop Odin in any way. Funny, how, now that Loki thought about it, getting angry at _Thor_ made little sense, no matter how brutish Thor had once been. Thor was not Odin. Odin was deceptive kindness, power and order bought with the currency of Loki's misery. Thor was different. Thor demanded honesty, and disliked others' misery so much that he would work for three hundred years to fix it, if he had to. 

Thor kept going. "I don't know that that isn't, as you put it, just a 'simple explanation.' I don't know that you really know why you do anything, Loki."

Oh, however much he'd hated hearing truths fall from his own lips, now he knew he hated them far more when they came from Thor's. He had to do something, say something to stop this. 

"Why are you helping Jotunheim?" he demanded, not because he didn't know the answer but because it was the first deflection that bobbed into his mind.

"Why weren't you?" Thor countered. "How could you know your world was doomed and do nothing? For hundreds of years? If I could go back and save Asgard, I would do so in an instant, at any cost to myself! And yet you—"

"Asgard is not Jotunheim," Loki said, with savage force. 

"Why? Don't tell me Laufey treated you even more poorly than my father did," said Thor, with that unerring ability of his to know _just_ where to strike. Loki whirled around to face him.

"Asgard had you!" he spat. "And your mother!"

Oh, the palace had been stunning, the wealth untold. Asgard had had a great, showy grandeur Loki had appreciated. But seeing its hallways and byways again in Hel had had less impact than he would have thought. It seemed the physical Asgard had never been what made him love it.

Thor's face softened. 

"Now Jotunheim has us," he said. "Help us save it."

"I am!"

"But you don't know why."

Thor was going to make him say it. Of course he was.

"Damn you," Loki said. " _Damn_ you."

"What—and, send me to Hel?" Thor said, rolling his eye. "Been there. Done that. So have you. Now that we're past that, let's be honest with each other for once."

"Why?" Loki said. "The last time we were honest, you hit me so hard I still have the bruise!"

Thor looked struck. 

"Yes," he said, after a few minutes. "And I'm sorry for that. I wish I hadn't. I wished it then. And if you like, we can talk about that next. But for now, let's not change the subject. You'd like me to say I think you're a wicked betrayer that I want nothing to do with, but it would hurt you if I _did_ say that."

"It wouldn't!" 

Thor put a hand on his hip and pointed at Loki, somehow making the pose regal instead of ridiculous.

"Shall we test it?" he said. 

Loki found he couldn't answer.

"I thought not," Thor said. "There may come a time when even I have to say it, but I don't want that time to come. I don't want to think you a coward, or honorless, or selfish. I want to keep thanking you, in my heart and with my words, for the _good_ you can do, Loki."

This sort of soppy pronouncement was just what Loki had been dreading, and yet now that it was here it seemed to carve something out of him and leave him lighter than before. He discovered that he was breathing hard, for some reason. He began to breathe harder still when Thor stepped towards him, took him in his arms, and pulled him in for a kiss. 

It could have been the perfect kiss, a wound healing itself. But something disrupted the odd silence of this place. Not just something. Specifically, a throat clearing. 

The whole conversation had been, to Loki, an exercise in bleeding out, nothing but a drowning in brutal feelings that was tinged with a dash of humiliation. The thought of having had a spectator made this worse. He pushed Thor off of him frantically, casting about for the source of the sound.

A blonde woman sat on a nearby log, smoking a pipe and staring at them. She was hale, bright-eyed, and she bore a rune on her arm identical to the one Thor's Valkyrie had.

"Gunilla?" Thor said, voice choked. 

She was a friend of Thor's. Naturally she was a friend of Thor's. Thor could fall into a literal trash heap and find a friend. He was simply that sort.

"Nice to see you again too, your majesty," said the woman. "Don't tell me you only lasted three hundred more years? My Brunnhilde will be — what? Fifth in line for the throne now? And, much as I love her, she shouldn't be queen of a damn thing."

"Your Valkyrie is in the line of succession?" Loki asked Thor.

" _My_ Valkyrie is," said Gunilla. "She used to be four hundred and seventh in line. But most of us Aesir are dead now, so."

-

Dead or not, Gunilla was a patient listener, nodding along as Thor told her every last detail about what brought them to Valhalla, details Loki would have preferred they keep between themselves. 

But Thor was an Aesir and inclined to trust this realm of Odin’s. 

"If you're not dead yourselves, I don't strictly have orders to take you to Valhalla," Gunilla said, leading them along the edge of a the forest to yet another grassy valley. "But I suppose I still could. The only command I have left to follow is to usher up those who have died in combat. There's nothing about _not_ ushering up those who _haven't_. Mainly because those almost never make it this far. Certainly not because they're looking for the Casket."

"So Valhalla truly is a great hall in the sky?" Thor said, pointing upwards to punctuate the point. He smiled broadly at the shining blue expanse above them.

"What else would it be?" said Gunilla. "This place? Please. This is just the waiting realm. You're not going to find anything here, not Valhalla, not the Casket, not your father."

All at once, the still grasses and torpid lake became acceptable to Loki. Comforting. Odin wasn't here. Odin was somewhere in the sky. Good. Very good. Perhaps they could stay down here a little longer, then.

But Gunilla was still talking. "We decided to make this the waiting realm because it was easier for us if the courageous dead were all shuttled into one place. See, we used to have to rush all over collecting the dead. Midgard, Vanaheim, Jotunheim—"

"Frost giants in Valhalla?" Thor said now, with a significant look at Loki.

"Well, they don't look like frost giants _here_ ," Gunilla said, gesturing at Loki like she could see through his blue illusion. "Though there are no true lies here, so they're still themselves in all the ways that count. To be honest, Odin would like to deny them all entry, but even he has to follow the rules here."

"Good," Loki said, meaning it. "What are the rules?"

That seemed to him the next logical question. If Odin was bound by rules for once, then Loki needed to know those rules. They must be powerful, to bind Odin.

"No direct lies," Gunilla said. "Feints are fine, and little illusions. Manipulations to make things go more peacefully—"

"That sounds like father," Thor said.

"No darkness, no chaos, no sudden change. Chaos and change might rip a hole in the realm. Everything here has to be ordered," Gunilla continued. "You must have order."

" _That_ sounds like Odin," said Loki, thinking back to all the times he'd been chained or caned or jailed for little bits of chaos. Odin did not like things he couldn't control. 

"Well, there's a purpose to it," Gunilla said, examining him over her pipe. "Like there's a purpose to you're not being blue. If you were blue, that would hardly foster a spirit of eternal rest and reward with our Aesir guests. We'd have fighting all over the place. And you can't have fights here, not any more than you can have lying. That's not how we do things."

Now Thor said, "Truly a paradise," but Loki couldn't see why he said that. If anyone liked a good fight, it was Thor. But naturally Thor wanted to see the best in his father's hall. Loki was alone in finding Odin's rules and realm suspicious. 

"If you like," was all Gunilla said by way of reply. She shrugged, making her golden hair ripple and gleam in the sunlight. "It has its good sides. One is that, since everything here is ordered and easy, it'll be easy to find your Casket."

"It will be?" Thor said.

"Oh, yes. It has its own little plinth and such."

"Segregated in the treasure hall?" Loki said sharply.

Of course. 

"What treasure hall?" Gunilla said. "This is Valhalla we're talking about. There's treasure around every corner. But the Casket of Ancient Winter—that we keep in the museum."

By now they'd reached another calm green lake, and in the distance Gunilla's winged horse waited. But Loki scarcely processed the horse.

"The museum?" he said, confused. "There's a museum?"

Gunilla only chewed on the end of her pipe as she stalked through the grass.

"A museum of glorious battles," she said, after a moment. "Everyone who dies gets their own little exhibit. I don't look at mine much. It's just me, suspended in midair, in the moment of my death. I can't say I like my expression. It's very 'oh dear, I'm reasonably sure I've got a spear in my back and I'm going to die now.' I was always very good at detecting things like that."

Now they reached the horse, a majestic animal that made Jotunheim's mole-bears seem about as prepossessing as overgrown earthworms. It was the kind of horse that demanded one compliment it on its intelligent gaze, its regal carriage, the great glossiness of its mane and wings. 

"Noble fellow. What's his name?" Thor asked.

Gunilla squinted across the lake. "Honestly, he's never told me," she said. 

"But he's your horse," Thor protested. "You must have named him!"

"My horse died," Gunilla said bluntly. "Its soul went wherever animal souls go, the world tree or somewhere. This horse isn't my horse. It's just an employee perk."

Thor frowned. "A what?"

Gunilla's mouth thinned. She passed a hand over the horse's back, as Thor had done, but her eyes found Loki's.

"Valkyries aren't guests here," Loki realized. 

Odin always needed lackeys. Always needed people below him to see his vision done. This was what had made Odin a king, the power to command others. To trap them, use them, rule them. 

"Valkyries are employed," Gunilla said, with no real emotion. But her teeth worried at her pipe. "Now come. Let me take you up and you can fetch the Casket. It should be easy."

But Loki did not trust that it would be easy, not with Odin involved. Odin was never quite what one expected him to be. Loki could have admired that. Only his hate was so strong that it broke admiration's kneecaps and sent it crawling home to its mother.

"Perhaps you and I could go up to Valhalla," Thor was suggesting now, to Gunilla, though it was Loki he was looking at with concern. "Retrieve the Ancient Winter, bring it back down to Loki, and then we can leave—"

"I want to go to Valhalla," Loki said.

This was a lie. But that Odin had a peaceful, perfect realm to rule, a realm without chaos, a realm where great warriors _still_ bowed at the knee to him—

It filled Loki with rankling venom. It made Loki clutch the all-powerful winter in his arms and think of destruction, of tumult and misrule and how desperately he longed to unleash these things. 

Thor now put a hand on his shoulder. "Brother, I think if you can avoid a reconciliation with the Allfather, that would be for the best—"

"I want to go," Loki said again.

It would not be a reconciliation. Reconciliation was what had just happened with Thor. It was painful, humiliating, and left him a shred of his former self, pathetic and small. And Loki was tired of Odin being able to do that to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reading over this chapter, I realized that the thought of a museum that records people's deaths is likely osmosed in part from The Good Place! Thanks, The Good Place.
> 
> Next chapter: Valhalla's not exactly what Loki expects.


	13. Winter in Valhalla

Before the crossing, Gunilla cut off a lock of her hair. She wound it around her pipe and made Thor promise to bring this to her wife in the realms of the living. Thor promised gladly, clearly happy to be of service to their Valkyrie attendant. Loki, meanwhile, patted the flanks of Gunilla's horse and tried not to panic.

This became more difficult once they caught sight of Valhalla. It was yet another replica of the Asgardian palace. This was what happened when the Norns gave control of the realms of the dead to a family long on power, but short on imagination. Valhalla was a better replica than Hela's had been, though, as Odin had no reason to change anything. He had made this place in death and in life. His orderly power was carved into every column, every sweeping staircase, all of it calculated to make Loki's breath stutter with resigned dread.

They landed on a wide balcony overlooking the clouds. Loki was by now breathing hard and pretending it was the freezing cold of the winter that made the hair stand up on his arms. Thor's concerned glances he ignored, until Thor finally stopped glancing his way.

Loki, for once, did not feel cheated by this. For once, this was completely reasonable of Thor, for a little ways off from their landing place there were seven or eight forms, each balancing strangely on one leg. One of the forms was very, very familiar. 

"And now we go into eagle pose," said a freckled, brown-skinned Valkyrie at the head of the one-legged pack.

"Volstagg?" said Thor, voice wavering.

Absurdity somehow defeated panic. Loki's dread wash away, replaced by confusion, and all thanks to a highly unlikely rescuer. Volstagg. He had little desire to take notice of Volstagg. Privately, Loki had never understood just what so endeared Thor to the Warriors Three, persons whose only traits were being sneakily quiet, being ravenous, and sleeping around, respectively. Loki had all those traits himself, and heaps more interesting ones, besides. But even he had to marvel at someone so fat twisted up like a Sakaarian crazy straw while simultaneously balancing like a stork.

"Hold it," said the freckled Valkyrie slowly.

"He won't," said Gunilla.

He didn't. Volstagg fell over. Not for lack of twisty balancing talent, but simply out of the sheer joy of seeing Thor.

"Oh, Ymir, this is going to be exactly like Ealfi," Loki realized, a moment too late, as precisely the same scene played out before him. Down to the joyous wrestling and repeat exclamations of good feeling.

"Alright, get me to the museum," he hissed at Gunilla. "I want to be in and out of this place, not bogged down by all their—"

He broke off, because Thor and Volstagg were kissing. It was manful kissing on the cheek, the kissing of two Asgardian warriors reunited after a series of long campaigns, and entirely proper, but it still made something in Loki knot itself up with envy.

"I don't think we should leave Thor alone," Gunilla said. "If this is what a friendly face and some morning exercises do to him, imagine what will happen when it's singing time."

"Singing time?" Loki said. His panic kept trying to make a resurgence, but strange little details like this kept beating it back.

"Yes, that's the part of the day when we sing."

"When do the great feasts and sagas begin?" Loki asked. 

"Lunch is around noon," said Gunilla. "But yeah, before that I think the group from the Hall of Honor is putting on a little show."

"About great battles, stunning sacrifice, and the noble deaths of kings?"

"I think so," said Gunilla. "One of the Midgardians proposed it. It's about a good man, a hero named Charlie Brown. Though I don't see how they're going to beat last week's. Last week's was about a sort of king and his adopted princess, a very heroic little orphan named Annie."

Now Thor and Volstagg were wiping away their masculine tears and falling into babbling over their missing friends. 

"Where is Fandral?" 

"Oh, with some nice little thing from the Hall of Self-Sacrifice, no doubt. He was making eyes at her over his gelatin breakfast this morning."

"And Hogun?"

"Water aerobics class."

"Water aerobics?" said Thor. He looked to Loki, now, and Loki could only stare back at him, just as helplessly confused as he was. "Is that—is that _really_ very Valhalla?"

"Oh, don't worry," said Volstagg, patting Thor's shoulder reassuringly. "There are no fewer than seven hundred separate morning exercise options, Thor! Here in Valhalla, exercise is whatever you choose!"

This proved to be completely correct. Soon enough, they coaxed Thor and Volstagg away from the balcony, and were walking through the halls of the palace: Loki, Gunilla, the horse, Thor, and Volstagg, in that order. They passed halls where the bold and boisterous dead were engaged in racket-ball games, halls where the dead were taking dance lessons. Halls where the lazier dead were watching recorded plays ("That's the Annie one from last week," said Gunilla. "It's really very good. Absolutely true what they say about a hard-knock life.") Halls for knitting classes, halls for learning how to cook phoenix-egg omelets. Several halls with swimming pools and all sorts of swimming pool games. Hogun was indeed in one of these, and Thor embraced him even though he was wearing an unnecessarily skimpy swimsuit.

"And the feasts!" Volstagg boomed. "Not one, but three per day! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner!"

"Yes, those are just the normal meals," said Loki.

He had come here prepared to face his doom. He was somewhat concerned, though, because his doom appeared to involve water aerobics.

Volstagg, meanwhile, was still speaking. 

"And the gelatin! The most wonderful gelatin at every meal, and in every flavor you could desire! Cherry! Grape! Peach! Roasted bilgesnipe with lemon sauce!"

"We thought there would be parties," Loki told Gunilla. "Noble yet riotous celebration of the greatest warriors ever to live."

"Well, every day we have several birthdays," Hogun noted.

"Such cupcakes!" Volstagg cried. "With little candles and rich pastel-colored frosting!"

Thor, for his part, seemed to be trying to valiantly adjust his expectations of Valhalla, nodding along at his friends' words and yet still not entirely managing to hide his disappointment. He kept looking back at Loki as though Loki could explain things, which was preposterous, because between the six of them (counting the horse), Loki was the only one who was very definitely not supposed to be here.

"But, as Loki says, er, you _do_ celebrate glory and honor and heroism and so on?"

"Oh yes. We had a very good show about that a few weeks ago," said Volstagg. "What was it called?"

"Oklahoma," Hogun supplied.

"Yes, that was the one about a magnificent, fantastical realm called Oklahoma," said Volstagg. "And sometimes we enact very complicated battles with a net on a table." 

"Table tennis," said Hogun.

"And, when we _really_ want to be daring," said Volstagg, with a wink, "we find an isolated back hall and play a sort of relay game with cups of ale, drinking the ale and then flipping the cups."

"Flip cup. That's called flip cup," Loki said, getting tired of all this. "I've played that on Sakaar—you know what? Never mind. Thor and I aren't here to hear about your lovely little resort, or retirement village, or whatever this is."

Now they were passing another hall with an ongoing dance class. A familiar figure was undulating rather stupidly to the sounds of a dance track which in lyrical inappropriateness quite rivaled the tunes En Dwi favored.

"Fandral!" Thor cried.

More embraces. More manly tears. This time Hogun and Volstagg and Fandral all managed to embrace each other as well as Thor, like they hadn't spent three hundred years exercising and slurping gelatin together. 

"Would that Sif were here to see you all," Thor mused.

"She'd have to die," said Loki testily. "Oh, but you're right. That's such a terribly small price to pay for a joyous eternity of—what is this called? Oh, it's right there on that little sign. Hip-hop reggaeton dance classes."

Thor now decided to ignore him. Since the Warriors Three had always just done whatever Thor did, so did everyone else.

"Later today we're all taking a field trip down to the waiting realm for a picnic," Fandral informed the others. "Everyone from the Hall of Dashing Rescues! Though everyone is welcome."

"Will there be gelatin?" said Loki. "I do hope there's gelatin."

This was apparently too much sarcasm for Thor, who now put himself bodily between Loki and his friends, his back to Loki, like he felt Loki was deliberately ruining all their tear-stained, noble reunification. Which Loki was.

"I think a picnic in those serene lands is a wonderful idea," Thor decided. "I would be honored to join you, my friends. You know, this place makes me think rather of university—"

"—or a nursing home for geriatric simpletons," Loki put in.

"—only in university, I was the prince, and so I felt it my duty to take as many electives as possible and make my royal house proud. I never had time for—for the simple pleasures of team-building dance practice, or cup-flipping games—"

"Flip cup," Fandral said, confirming Loki's guess from before. "Let's go do that now! I know some lovely young things who will join us."

Loki had never made it to university. When Thor had been at university, he had been exiled, not yet ready to kill Laufey and so not yet ready to return to Jotunheim, and yet barred by Odin from returning to Asgard. He _had_ done rather a lot of undulating, body-twisting, and overdrinking in that time, though. He had not yet understood how to say no to En Dwi's wilder ideas, so he'd even had very aerobic sex in a pool several times. This meant that literally nothing in this Valhalla held as much interest for him as finding the winter and getting out before Odin could ruin things. Certainly not picnicking and flip cup. Though now Thor glanced at him over his shoulder, as though to invite him along, 

"I'll look for the winter, then," Loki said. "Just like I did before."

Thor frowned, but still followed after his friends. This left a concerned Gunilla with Loki.

"You _really_ should insist that he stay with you," she said. "What if he forgets that he doesn't belong here? Terrible things could happen if he decides he belongs here.” 

"You think the endless supply of gelatin will seduce him?" Loki said. "Don't worry. He'll be fine."

Thor had more connecting him to the world of the living than Loki did, after all. Two children, a loving mother, a people worth saving, a realm not worth saving at all but which he clearly wanted to save anyway. All Loki had, at this point, was the paper-thin suggestion that if they made it out of here with the last two winters, there might yet be more kissing with Thor, who might yet be spared by the All-Winter.

Anyway, he didn't actually want Thor about while he sneaked his way to the winter. Thor trusted Odin, and that was bound to be a liability. No, better for Loki to find the winter himself, and quickly, and then double back for Thor. Perhaps Thor's presence here could even distract Odin while Loki searched for the winter. Certainly, Odin would rather welcome his son than his hostage and tool.

And if Odin _did_ come for Loki. Well.

Now he had Thor out of the way and could loose the Ancient Winter. What a violent pandemonium, an excellent distraction it would make. Loki did not especially want to face Odin, but the chaotic thrum of the winter at least gave him the courage to risk it. He clasped it close and let its cold fury soothe him as he trailed after Gunilla and the horse.

They walked past endless corridors full of cheerful people making lanyards and other little hanging crocheted things; people dozing on benches, blankets pulled cozily up to their ears; people practicing sillier and sillier sorts of dances. Everything was very orderly, despite this. The dozing people were all in the Dozing Hall, the crafting sorts in the Corridor of Crafting. There appeared to be a Ballroom of Beermakers, where amateur beer makers congregated, under the direction of yet another Valkyrie. Both Loki and Thor had assumed that Valhalla would be a glorious eternal revel, but neither of them had supposed that Thor's father, with his frankly psychotic propensity for civilization and peaceable Aesir order at all costs, would have designed the sort of afterlife that encouraged one to spend all day in house leggings and fuzzy-bunny slippers. 

Gunilla, he realized now, was wearing fuzzy-bunny slippers.

 _I will be doing these people a favor if the winter destroys Odin,_ Loki thought, but he did not say that, because it did seem too hopeful a possibility. Instead he said, "Your master certainly planned his great hall down to the last detail."

Although up ahead there was a hall with a little plaque proclaiming it The Museum, now Gunilla stopped. So did the horse. Gunilla gave Loki an offended look. So did the horse.

"My what?" she said. 

"Master. Odin."

"Odin hasn't been my master since he tried to trick the Valkyries into permanently moving into Hel to contain his daughter for him. And that was several centuries before you were born, I'll wager."

That did sound like something Odin would do, but this still didn't line up.

"Does he not rule this place?" Loki demanded. "Did he not create it?"

"Oh, he rules it," Gunilla said. She seemed to be picking her words carefully. She also seemed strangely relieved, like Loki was asking after something she very much wanted to discuss, and hadn't had an excuse to bring up until now. "I mean, someone has to rule here. And this place is his. He, as you say, created it. But it's more that it's his in the sense that it was made for him."

"I don't follow," Loki said. 

The infernal horse actually rolled its eyes at him, like he was being obtuse. Gunilla chewed a fingernail thoughtfully.

"Well, let me see. How to put it? The Norns weave birth, life, and death for all of us, yes?"

Naturally. Loki nodded.

"But they do not weave afterlife," said Gunilla. "They cannot determine what happens in the realms of the dead. They do not even have a means of keeping the strongest of the dead from rising, believe it or not. Post-death is the only span of existence which lies beyond the Norns. And the powerful don't like when something is beyond them."

"Yes, and they've always been a touch cold on Odin," Loki said.

That had been the one good thing about going before Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld. The one good thing.

"Oh, they're cold all of them," said Gunilla. "The whole golden-rotten family. Those are four weavings which _quite_ got out of control. They conquered just about everything, not just physically but metaphorically. Why, between Odin and Thor and Hela and Frigga, I'd say you have command of—oh, all of wisdom, healing, death, life, royalty, wandering, war, peace, order, chaos, the gallows, the thunder, the lightning, storms, oak trees, all sorts of birds, cats, wolves, fertility, marriage, frenzy, gloom, breastplates, black eyeliner, sweatshirts, gardening, sorcery, prophecy—"

"Yes, the Norns wove them a little _too_ powerful," said Loki. "I'll grant you that."

The three goddesses had told him as much, long ago. 

"Well, for the rest of us everyday sorts, us commonplace warriors just trapped in the normal stream of life, if you will," said Gunilla, "we die, and it's a simple matter of whether we were decent or despicable. And decent isn't a terribly high bar, either. You wouldn't believe how many cheats at table tennis there are here. But for the royal family, well."

She smiled, a slow and satisfied thing.

"In death, they get the royal treatment. The Norns want them to stay dead, you see. So they made sure that each is powerful enough that they spend their lives creating a whole additional realm that reflects everything they were in life. Claiming a slice of the afterlife, like they do everything else. Hela gets an eternal war, which she can never go beyond. And for Odin, an eternal order, a nice neat schedule, from gelatin breakfast to morning exercise to singing time."

She stopped and stared at Loki expectantly. Loki now felt obtuse. It was not a pleasant feeling. He was generally used to being, if not the smartest person present, then at least in the top ten. Certainly not the dimmest. Yet what Gunilla was proposing made no sense at all.

"I don't serve Odin," she said slowly, trying to make Loki see something his brain could not quite make room for. "I swore off him when all the rest of the Valkyries swore off him. You can ask Queen Frigga about that. But I do serve Valhalla, now. I serve Valhalla very gladly. For Odin cannot leave this place, cannot try to return to the living and extend the life the Norns allotted him. This is his realm, his one true land to rule, and once he faltered in life, it claimed him as surely as Hela's claimed her."

Loki gaped at her. "But that would mean—"

That would mean that this dead-dull, sanitized place was not a reward for Odin. Not a pleasure palace for him. Nothing at all but a—

"I believe you said it aptly, when you called it a nursing home," came a voice from beyond them.

It was a voice Loki hated with deranged intensity. He turned.

Odin was wearing a bathrobe and fuzzy-bunny slippers. Loki was affronted by the very sight. How dare he? How dare he look frail and pathetic? That was always how he had made Loki feel, and so that look belonged to Loki.

"Gunilla, my dear, you are needed to help set up chairs for You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown," Odin said mildly. 

-

There was indeed a Casket of Ancient Winters on a plinth in the museum hall, but it was better called a Casket of Ancient Winter. Loki could feel only one force swirling around inside it, identical to the one he held in his arms. Which left him with only two winters. One was still missing.

"It's a trick!" Loki sputtered. "I don't know why I expected anything else from you."

Odin, seated on a bench before the plinth, seemed indifferent. He reached into a pocket of his robe and pulled out a white handkerchief, slightly soiled, which he used to dab at his nose. Loki had only been with him for about five minutes and had already discovered that Odin had a near-endless supply of slightly soiled handkerchiefs. Since this was Odin, Loki kept an eye on them. Norns even knew what Odin planned to conjure out of them.

Odin sneezed, then put the handkerchief away.

"There is no reason for me to trick you, Loki. Indeed, I am very glad to see you."

"Stop lying. You hate me," Loki said flatly. "Now, where's the third winter?"

"Do I not have reason to hate you?" Odin said, cold and to the point about it. Then, a beat later, "But I cannot tell a lie. Valhalla won't allow it. So I still welcome the sight of you."

Loki did not want a welcome from him. He wanted only the last two winters, but Odin, being Odin, was making clear that Loki was not to have what he needed. And now all of Loki's panic and dread was spiraling, climbing ever-higher, because Odin did not seem to be Odin at all. He seemed faded, as though this sunny realm had bleached him, too, of his color. 

What was Odin playing at? Why this pretend-weakness? He couldn't think Loki really believed it. 

"Where's the third winter?" Loki said again.

Odin didn't answer. Odin never made things easy. Loki curled his fingers around the winter he was currently holding and tried to think his way out of this, for once. Across from the Casket's plinth, there was a display of several Aesir dying heroically in order to save a village from some sort of dragon. He used his magic to fling the pieces of the display across the room, taking it apart both violently and methodically to see if there were any secret catches in its mechanisms, any special back hallways he could not detect.

This Valhalla did not seem to have any secret places he could sense, and while that had felt reasonable, given what Gunilla had told him about the place's rules, now it felt damning. No secrets meant no secret place to put the third winter, but then how was Loki to find it? 

Odin, meanwhile, was frowning at him.

"So powerful, and still you tantrum as you used to, like a child."

"I _was_ a child," Loki said.

Small, ill-fed, unwanted, and warped into a tool by this man. And now he could not even walk away from Odin, for if he did, he might never find just what the king of Valhalla was hiding from him. 

"I always saw you as more than a child," Odin said.

"No, you _forced_ me to be more than a child. There's a difference. Where's the third winter? You always said you took all the Ancient Winters of Jotunheim. You clearly still have two. Where's the last one?"

Odin smiled, which was never a good sign.

"I once had control of all three Ancient Winters of Jotunheim. Now I have one."

Loki almost threw the one he was holding at him. 

"This isn't for me, you old fool! This is for Thor. Your son has been threatened with death by the All-Winter if we don't return their magic to them. I hardly think giving them two-thirds of it will suffice to make them change their minds. So where. Is. The final. Winter?"

"Thor is here?"

Loki hadn't said that, but naturally Odin intuited it. Odin was not the Allfather for nothing, even if he was currently an Allfather who was playing with the loose threads of his bathrobe. 

"Thor is unlikely to be killed by your All-Winter. Frigga will not allow any harm to come to Thor," Odin decided. 

Like his son's life was of little concern to him. Now Loki had to physically force himself to step up to the Casket, collect its second winter. Better to do that than to throw them both at Odin's head. That would come after he learned where the third winter was.

"This is Frigga's plan," he snapped. "Sending us here. This is how we save Thor."

"So you and Frigga are on good terms again?" Odin said.

Loki paused in gathering the winter. That was an odd question.

"When were she and I not on good terms?"

Frigga was not Odin. Frigga had always been good to him.

Odin's watery, rheumy eye blinked slowly at him. "Well, she was so upset when you left Asgard. Upset with the both of us, both you and I, for the muddle you made of things."

Loki did not want to talk about that, about why he'd been banished.

Wait—did Frigga _know_ why he'd been banished?

He felt cold, and it wasn't the winter that was doing it. He felt so cold he burned from toe to tip.

"What do you mean?" he managed now. "What did you tell her?"

"She's my wife," Odin said simply. "I told her everything, of course."

"She _knew_?"

"She was the one who recommended you be banished," Odin said. "My punishment for you would have been much worse."

Loki's hands shook. Frost gathered at his fingertips, rather more frost than Loki usually summoned. On instinct, he manipulated the two winters, melting them into each other, letting icy power build on icy power. 

But Odin did not seem afraid. He never had. He had always seemed exactly like this: powerful, stern, satisfied.

"Oh, were you planning to attack me, little _winter_?" he said, blinking again, "Simply because I've told you that she's known about you all along? It was such a pity that I listened to her and sent you away. I'd had control of all three of the Ancient Winters, but after that I was down to two."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Wait a darn second, what exactly is Odin implying here.  
> 2\. I promise Thor will decide he's better off helping Loki in like T-3 seconds. He's just happy to see his friends again. 
> 
> Next chapter: a wicked brother (but possibly not the one you think).


	14. The Mighty Angrboda

Though Thor's heart was gladdened by the sight of his lost friends, it took mere seconds for him to decide that flip cup and picnicking, however marvelous the ale and gelatin, were not worth abandoning a heroic quest for. Not when New Asgard, Jotunheim, and Ymir were counting on them. He cast about for Lok, but both Loki and Gunilla seemed to have vanished.

"Friends," he told the Warriors Three, "perhaps we should play flip cup another—"

No. Not another day. The joy that he felt at seeing their faces took on a solemn, painful tinge. There would be another day, maybe, but hopefully far in the future. 

"You don't think you'll like flip cup?" Fandral said now. "No matter. There's also pottery-making, card games, a truly wonderful test of chance called 'bingo'—"

"You're happy here," Thor realized. "With all these activities and gelatin feasts."

"The gelatin is stupendous," said Volstagg. "Every flavor, stupendous! Alright, not the celery flavor. But you can't have perfection."

"And it all makes you happy?" Thor said.

This mattered. If it didn't—if he thought his friends, his people, were not pleased with this bizarre form of heaven, then Thor would have gladly amended his mission. He would be making plans to get them out, get them all out somehow, and settle them in any place that would give them a proper home. He was already half-making plans to try and sort things for the Valkyries, who seemed (rather unfairly, to Thor) to be unable to enjoy Valhalla the way others did.

But, regardless of this, the Warriors Three didn't seem disinclined to call this place paradise.

"My wife and children are here," said Volstagg, as though this wasn't terribly sad.

"My grandfather," said Hogun, "I never met him until I came here."

"And we have the prettiest maidens that have ever existed in all the nine realms," said Fandral. "Some were frost giants in life, so perhaps it isn't quite right to call them maidens, but their forms! So charmingly dual-gendered! I assure you they have my devotion!"

Thor grinned at that. 

"I know something of the passions such cold forms can enflame," he admitted. "My secondborn—did I tell you I have two children now? His mother is a giant. And, well, this may not come as much of a shock, but Loki and I—"

He broke off, however, seeing the dismay on his friends' faces.

"Thor, my dear friend," Volstagg said, his eyes filling with tears. "You left children behind?"

"What?" Thor said. "Oh. Oh, no. No, I'm not _dead_."

-

While Thor's friends had not lied about enjoying picnics and flip cup, their enthusiasm had been deliberately exaggerated in order to distract Thor from what they'd assumed was the monumental sadness of his own death, a mere three hundred years after theirs. 

But a living Thor didn't require cheerful distraction from them. Instead they gave him their undivided attention, albeit only after a brief decamp to what, on Asgard, had been the receiving hall. Here it appeared to be a casual sort of dining space. Everyone sat on a variety of sofas, divans, or tuffets with overstuffed backs, while a pair of barefoot Vanir on an elevated stage played small sets of drums and a third Vanir recited poetry. 

Thor took a tuffet and sampled the gelatin. If it wasn't exactly as splendid as promised, at least he could say that it had a truly fascinating consistency and a very vibrant color. Then he launched into an explanation of his quest. Of course, that necessitated explaining what he was doing on Jotunheim. How they got there, where they were living, the political situation. His marriage, then his other marriage. His children. King Helblindi. Ymir. And, naturally, Loki's involvement in all of the above. 

From the glances his friends shared, Thor appeared to spend a little too much time on that last topic. 

"You mean to say that, were it not for _Loki_ , you really would be joining us for all eternity?" Volstagg said, around a mouthful of gelatin.

Thor didn't see why he or the others looked so surprised. Thor had always known that Loki had the potential for great heroism.

"How busy life is," Fandral put in now, sighing. "So much happens and changes."

"I forgot that," added Hogun.

Thor frowned. Perhaps the tales of his and Loki's exploits were making his friends miss the realms of the living? That was not what he had intended at all. He was happy that they were happy here, however strange and oddly disappointing he found the place, personally.

"My life does not have nearly this much gelatin," he said quickly, to make them feel better. "Nor all of these wondrous activities, nor such a magnificent eating hall!"

"Oh, we know," Fandral said. "Don't worry. We don't actually miss life."

"We love Valhalla," said Hogun.

Volstagg said, "Yes, everyone is very happy here, except for—"

Suddenly, both Fandral and Hogun were digging their spoons into Volstagg's gelatin and stuffing it, without preamble, into his mouth. Volstagg seemed relieved by this, like he'd been about to say something he hadn't meant to.

"Except for who?" Thor said.

His friends all stared at each other. Thor's mind flashed to Loki again, for only someone like Loki, someone who hungered for plots and diversions, could truly hate a place like this. Even Thor didn't hate it, though he did think that the Valkyries probably deserved better. Also, once you completed all seven hundred separate morning exercise options it was likely to get a bit boring.

"Thor," came his father's voice, from the door of the hall.

 _Ah_ , thought Thor.

Perhaps his friends did not need to answer. Thor knew his father well enough that the odd uncertainty Valhalla bred in him suddenly made sense. This place was certainly safe and orderly — the work of a perfect king, a king so suited to kinging that none before or after would ever match him. But Thor still could not reconcile Odin with this particular kingdom. No, such a place would make Odin bored, dull his senses. Odin would hate it. He was like Loki: he needed action, needed decisions to make and power to barter for. And there was none of that here in Valhalla's perfect peace.

The bathrobe also didn't help. The bathrobe and fuzzy slippers made him look older and frailer than Thor had ever seen him. 

"Father," Thor said, rising respectfully to greet him. For a moment, he almost dropped to his knees out of habit, but of course that wasn't proper anymore. Odin was no longer his king. Perhaps that was why the luster of childhood awe was gone. Perhaps that was why Thor only felt a sort of solemn regret when he looked at his father.

He settled for a bow as he might make to Helblindi, one king to another.

"My son," Odin said, coming forward and putting his hands on Thor's shoulders. "My heart is lifted when I look upon you."

Thor's heart, by contrast, was rather grave. He wanted to ask if his father had seen Loki, but decided it was better not to. Obviously Odin hadn't. If he had, the results would be more catastrophic than this. Of course, this meant that Loki probably hadn't found the other two winters yet.

"Now that you are here, I would have you stay," Odin said.

Thor's friends made noises of dismay.

"No, your majesty! He isn't dead!"

"He seeks the Casket of Ancient Winters."

"We must help him, sire!"

Thor flashed them a look of appreciation. He stepped back, the better to regard his father less as a returning child and more as an ambassador from another realm, a needier realm. 

"They speak true, father. I need the Casket. Jotunheim is dying without it."

His father's laugh was a foxy, canny sound. Thor wondered if this was where Loki had learned that laugh.

"And?" Odin said.

Thor frowned. Perhaps Loki had learned more than a laugh.

"We cannot let a realm die," he said slowly. "Such a thing would not be right."

'What is 'right'?" Odin said irritably. "Let us speak of what is right for your people. You do not have a realm of your own, yes? Not anymore. But if Jotunheim were warmer, it would be perfect for the Aesir."

"Yes, and deadly for many of the giants," Thor said. He was glad that there weren't many people about. In the time it had taken to recount the past three hundred years to his friends, even the drum-players had packed up and gone to see some sort of play about a good brown man. This meant that there were fewer people around to watch Thor be slightly embarrassed by Odin's shrewd coldness.

"Why do you think I took that Casket in the first place?" Odin said now. "To have another realm for our people. The giants are not our people."

"Really," Thor said. "Because I hear that some of them are fully equal to us in death, though you apparently try to hide that."

Odin had never feared venting his displeasure at his son in life, but here in Valhalla perhaps such extremes of temper were not allowed. Now, he merely switched tactics. His gnarled old hands found Thor's, as though never mind his son's impudence, never mind. All would be forgiven if Thor only listened to him.

"Well, then at least you must stay to have some revels with your friends. It has been three hundred years since you have seen them."

Hogun, ever the boldest of the Warriors Three in life, now spoke up.

"No. No revels. Thor must not stay for any reason. He has made a pledge to the world of the living and we must help him keep it."

Odin scoffed. 

"He has made a pledge to a world with no Asgard. A world where our home went up in flames. What kind of world is that, Hogun the Grim?"

The look he sent Thor's way was very, very sly.

"Are you even enjoying the half-life you are all condemned to, refugees beneath the surface of a dying planet?"

This was strange, because now it occurred to Thor that he hadn't told his father about any of that. 

Even stranger: Thor didn't _not_ enjoy his life.

For the past three hundred years, he had endured, survived, built a kingdom, made sure his people were fed and housed and their remaining knowledge recorded instead of lost. He had looked after an ancient giant, the first being to ever come into creation. He had helped raise a daughter, sired a son, loved and lost a magnificent wife, and loved and divorced a rather shoddy one. He had learned what it was to be a servant, nothing at all but a tool for the needs of others, and what it was to be a king, which was much the same if you thought about it.

He had spent so much time comparing it to the shining halls of old Asgard, of his youth, but that had been ill-thought out of him. He did not have the kingdom he had been born into, no. Instead he had a family he loved, a people he adored, a land they protected, and a realm he wanted to save for both his Aesir daughter and his Jotunn son. 

And Loki, now. Loki had fallen into this life with a mischievous, easy glimmer, the edge that Thor had lacked for the past three hundred years.

Thor looked down at where his hands joined his father's.

When they had realized they would have to destroy Asgard, his father had given the order to resurrect Surtur. He had given this order, specifically, to Thor. Thor had been quite willing to do it, to face the danger for his people, but then his mother had stepped in.

 _No,_ she'd said. _Thor is not king, and what you demand is the sacrifice of the king._

"Why do you want me to stay here so badly?" Thor asked, plain about it.

"Why do you want to be a vassal king?" Odin snapped. "Second-rate? If you stay here, you shall be a real king, king of the perfect realm, a realm without suffering, without conflict—"

"No," Thor said, exactly as his mother had said it three hundred years ago. "That's _your_ job. Why don't you want it?"

Whatever twisting, elusive answer Odin might have given, it never came. Gunilla's nameless horse chose this very moment to crash through the window. It bore Gunilla, of course, but also a very, very disheveled Loki, clutching both Hel's winter and what looked like the Casket. He was wide-eyed and had a rats' nest for hair. He almost fell off the horse when it landed. 

"Oh, blast it," Odin muttered.

Loki righted himself, swore, said, "One moment," and then tucked both the Casket and the winter in what Thor could only assume was some kind of extradimensional pocket. Then he said, testy, "I am so, _so_ tired of your family throwing me out of windows!"

Thor stared at his father.

"You threw him out of a window?"

"After he invaded my mind—" Loki began.

"A skill I once taught you," Odin said. "You're welcome. Also, you're the one that created a fissure in the very fabric of this realm."

"Because you wanted me to!" Loki retorted, pointing an accusing finger at Odin. "You goaded me into using the power of the Ancient Winters, so that I could rip a hole right into the realms of the living!"

"Oh yes," Gunilla said now. "Everyone knows King Odin is bored here and wants to leave, but can't."

A smile danced across her face. A smile danced across her horse's face, too. 

"Valhalla won't let him," Gunilla said, turning her smile on Odin. "It needs its king. That's the chief rule here, isn't it, your majesty?"

 _Or_ a _king_ , Thor thought. _It probably doesn't need to be the Allfather. In fact, if the king here was someone else, some other suitable Aesir who stands for power and order, I suspect he could leave._

He was suddenly extremely tired. 

When young, his greatest pain had been the rather simple, childish fear that he might not live up to Odin's expectations. It hadn't mattered that he didn't always agree with Odin, that Odin's great wisdom and power encompassed all, and so might have frightened a smarter son. Thor had not been that sort of son. He'd been the worshipful, dutiful sort. The sort that assumed that the only way to be a good son, a good king, was to think in his father's voice. It wasn't that Odin was too powerful, too canny. It was that Thor was unworthy. Only when he became Odin would he truly understand the old man, would he truly be fit to question him. 

Then he'd had children of his own, and with them came sleepless nights, nights where he woke in a cold sweat after dreaming of treating Thrud the way Odin had treated Loki. Treating Magni the way Odin had treated Thor himself. 

Thor pulled his hands from his father's. He looked to Loki, then Gunilla. Loki seemed relieved, Gunilla deeply satisfied. 

Her expression eroded any sense Thor had that she was at all in thrall to the Allfather, which was good. She shouldn't be. No one should be. And it seemed no one here needed Thor to rescue them, or at least none of the deserving people did. 

"Right," Thor told Loki. "Take me to that fissure. We're leaving."

-

After Gunilla promised to work with the other Valkyries to close the crack Loki had made between the realms, they stumbled through it into the world of the living. 

They did not find themselves on Jotunheim. Instead they were in a dark, earthy forest, too warm to be the ice realm. Great thickets formed a tunnel over their heads. Despite the lack of light, glowing flowers grew in profusion at their feet. Iridescent baby rabbits and kittens peeked from the foliage, their fur an unnatural fluffy green. 

Thor scooped a kitten up by the scruff. It made to try and bite him, but then discovered it had no teeth. It melted into a snake, then a toad, then a beast he could not name. 

“Put it in your pocket,” Loki advised him. “Your mother will like it.”

Thor put it in his pocket. It melted into a baby rabbit, curled up, and went to sleep. 

“Where are we, Loki?”

Loki was blue again, that radiant deep blue that softened all his sharpest features. He did not look at Thor. He was busy gathering prickly glowing flowers by the handful. 

“We're at the base of the world tree. Which means we should be hurrying back, actually.”

Thor managed to get out of him _how_ (to follow the path in either direction was to circle the length of all possible realms; to stray from the path was not advisable) and _why_ they should be hurrying back (anything that spent too much time here might well become something else, quite accidentally). But aside from this Loki now said little. He continued to avoid looking at Thor. His quiet had more permanence than the little creatures gamboling around at their feet. 

With Loki, that was never a good sign. Loki’s quiet always had teeth. 

As they journeyed through the dense thicket, Thor wracked his mind for potential explanations. By now, he'd thoroughly re-familiarized himself with Loki, so predicting the next battle should not be too hard. 

“You didn’t rip any other holes in the fabric of the dying realms, did you?”

“Of course not."

“You didn’t take anything you weren’t supposed to?”

“Oh, but there was just so much to take,” Loki said. “I’m absolutely crawling with sleeping bees, gelatin, and framed portraits of your sister. Couldn't leave those behind.”

Alright, probably not that, then. 

“We do have all of the Ancient Winters, don’t we?”

A pause. 

Loki said, “I currently possess all three winters, yes.”

Thor tried to understand how that could be a bad thing. That pause before answering — that had had significance. But he could not see why or how. 

“Thor,” Loki said suddenly. “What do you think will happen with these winters? How will the All-Winter take such powerful magic into themselves, do you think?”

Thor really wasn’t the person to ask, as his study of frost giant magic was nil and his experience with frost giant biology limited only to what it took to conceive a child. 

“They could swallow up the winters?” he guessed, after a few minutes. “That would seem to be the obvious way.”

Another pause.

"Ah," Loki said. "Yes. Yes, I was thinking the same thing."

"Or melt them into themselves," Thor decided. "Sort of absorb them."

Loki made a strange little noise.

"Or crush them up and release their magic into the realm for the taking—"

"Yes, I think we've established that however they do it, it won't be pleasant!" Loki said now, hurriedly, as though he hadn't brought the topic up himself. "Never mind that, then! Let's just be going!"

And then he was stalking ahead, pressing his hands to the thicket around them and muttering things Thor could not entirely discern. Cagey. Jittery. Weirder than normal. 

Also never good signs with Loki.

"We should speak," Thor told him gravely, the fifth time he pressed up against rough bark and muttered into it.

"What, again?"

"Something weighs on your mind and I would know what it is."

"Nothing weighs on my mind," Loki said. "It's a wonderful day. We toured all the realms of the dead. We go now to save all Jotunheim. Possibly you will even get custody of your son, if the All-Winter remembers he exists, and so a beautiful eternity of Jarnsaxa visits await you."

"You should know by now that if you want to change the subject, changing it to a topic as unpleasant as Jarnsaxa won't get you anywhere at all."

Loki turned and scowled at him. 

"What do you want of me, Thor? Are we to have sentimental, humiliating little chats every three minutes?"

Thor paused and tapped a finger on his chin, considering this. 

"I want more than that with you, but if you insist on making sentiment and humiliation necessary, then yes."

Loki shot him an exasperated glare. 

“I worry for you,” Thor said. 

He was no wordsmith, but this was the truth and Thor liked the truth. To throw up a truth like this with Loki was to stake Loki to something real, something he could not jitter his way out of. 

Indeed, for an instant Loki looked vulnerable. A little anguished. Then that brittle energy came over him again. 

“Don’t,” he advised Thor. His voice was light, deceitful. “We have been to Hel and Valhalla and back. Take heart, brother. Most of the danger is past.”

Reason told Thor that this was so, but something else, something deeper, told him something was amiss here. 

“How did you know where to find the winter in Hel?” he said. “And how did my father goad you into using the power of the Ancient Winters?"

Loki's face was pale. 

"I found the winter because I'm magical," he said after a few moments. "Did you doubt that that could come in handy? Are you still the callow child who looked down on me for my magic, rather than trusting that it could help you?"

Regret twisted Thor's heart.

"I always trusted that it could help me."

But he'd been arrogant as a child. Stupid and complacent, too. He reached for Loki without thinking, wanting forgiveness for that. He half-expected that Loki would shove him aside or back away again.

Loki didn't. This time he leaned into it, closing his eyes. He looked tired, his green leathers in disarray, hollows beneath his eyes. Thor dared to smooth the rumpled mess of his hair. He had the odd thought that he'd like to take Loki home, boss him into the bath, clean every inch of him, kiss it all rather thoroughly, and order him to bed.

Then, obviously, when Loki was better-rested, do quite a lot more than that.

"We should hurry back," he told Loki now. When he pulled Loki to him, Loki didn't fight it. "And you didn't answer my question about how father goaded you."

"We don't have to hurry that much," Loki muttered. His long fingers found the laces of Thor's shirt. "And again: why are you always wanting to talk? I thought that was my thing, brother."

He slipped beyond the laces. His touch was cold, and he danced his way to Thor's neck. When he pulled Thor to him for a kiss, Thor let it happen despite the little prickling thought that still Loki was avoiding something. Then their mouths met and even that thought evaporated. He liked the hot-cold thrill of kissing frost giants, always had, but the fact that this frost giant was _Loki_ made it all the better. Loki was right that talking was his thing, but when they kissed he made little needy sounds, robbed of words. Thor pressed him into the gnarled trunk of the thicket and applied himself to coaxing more of those sounds from him. 

He was vaguely aware that poison-green kittens and bunnies still gamboled at their feet. He ignored this in favor of undoing some of Loki's leathers, pressing a hand against the cool flesh at his hip. Loki made a little satisfied noise against his mouth.

"There's more further down, you know," Loki managed, breaking off the kiss for a moment.

Oh, Thor knew. He worked now to undo Loki's leggings, pulling them down to reveal Loki's cock. This Thor took in hand, giving it enough good strokes to have Loki reaching back to steady himself, clumsy against the wood at his back. Thor waited until he caught his balance before sinking to his knees in front of him.

Loki made a small, surprised noise. Thor shushed him. Behind Loki's cock was the real prize, the wet folds that every frost giant had tucked back there. Loki's were flushed dark and glistening even before Thor traced the outer lips with a finger. Thor could hear his intake of breath when that finger slipped in, rubbed in time with the hand on Loki's cock. Loki seemed unable to keep from fucking back against him at first, the sounds of his breath harsh and guttural in the perfect stillness of the world tree. But soon enough his hands found Thor's shoulders, pushed him back a bit.

"Not like this," Loki managed. "I—I'll fall over if we keep at it like this. Let me just—"

Then he was scrambling down to join Thor, apparently not caring about the dirt and the vivid green moss that met his bare thighs and rear. His eyes met Thor's briefly, his want clear on his face. He bit his lip. Then he was twisting onto his hands and knees, presenting his bare ass and, further back, the sweet little mound of his second sex. 

Thor's cock jumped straight to attention.

"You mentioned," Loki said, still breathing hard between his words, "that I suck like—what was it? An 'intergalactic courtesan'? Well, I can be used like one, brother. If you like."

His look over his shoulder confirmed this, a come-hither look that left Thor reeling. Loki wanted to be taken, wanted more than Thor had even been contemplating. Thor wanted to oblige. 

But he did not want his first time fucking Loki to be like this. Oh, when he rubbed at Loki's folds Loki still made such delicious noises, pressing back into Thor's hands, giving Thor all of himself. And he dripped with such need that it made Thor want to play with him, stretch out the release until he was crying for it. Thor could be a practiced lover, could make Loki come apart on his cock. He wanted that, and obviously Loki wanted it too. 

But this was not _quite_ right. Loki wanted this, yes, but he was also exhausted and avoidant. And Thor did not want him for a courtesan, did not want to take him crying and begging on the floor of a dirty wood. Thor wanted more than mindless seduction with Loki. He wanted trust, he wanted things right between them. 

He willed his cock to relax, despite the vision before him. 

"I expect you to answer my questions when we're done," he told Loki. Then, ignoring Loki's offended shriek, he pulled those blue thighs towards him and flipped Loki over. He applied his mouth to the folds of Loki's cunt. It was wetter still now, and soft. Norns, but the softness, the _give_ was what Thor liked best. Thor did play, now. Not to torment Loki, but to get him wailing as Thor dipped in over and over. Loki took his fingers, his tongue. Loki's cock, too, begged for his attention, so Thor gave it. As he stroked it, he made sure to lap at Loki's folds, tasting him until he shook. Loki pulsed around him, fucking up against him. When he came, he was loud and messy. Thor had never heard his own name sound so sweet.

He gathered Loki up into his arms when he was done. Though the press of Loki's bony hip against his own cock was now near-painful, Thor willed the sensation away.

"I thought you would—" Loki began, blinking at him, "thought you might—"

"What?" Thor said roughly. "Take you? Use you for my own pleasure? Not today, brother."

Not until things were right between them. And Thor could not shake the feeling that they weren’t yet. 

-

In the end, all he got out of Loki was that Odin had used something against him.

"And do not ask what, because the list of secrets your father keeps on everyone is endless," Loki snapped. "That's his power. Secrets and cruelty. I don't see why you need to know more than that, unless you'd like to emulate him someday."

Then he busied himself with tapping thicket and dirt, searching for, he explained to Thor, a place where reality was thin, thin enough to let them slip beyond the world tree. This had that maddening magic-logic which made sense to Loki and to Frigga. Thor let him do what he needed to.

As he tapped, however, a thought seemed to come to Loki.

"You know," he said, with the lightness that meant he was planning something, "you and New Asgard do not need Jotunheim, Thor."

"This again?" Thor said.

It was enough like Odin's earlier manipulations that Thor already knew he had no patience for it.

Loki tapped a branch and said, "You have enormous power. You could make a whole new world yourself, I'd wager. As your father made Valhalla. As your sister shaped Hel. Why not go make your own world and let Jotunheim fix Jotunheim? You could cease serving Ymir and turn your ability instead to determining how you might make a proper world, a paradise—"

He tapped another branch. The bark before them thinned somehow, melted as the little kitten-rabbit had, and became the image of a Vanir town square, bustling with foodsellers and matrons and criers shouting about the Vanir war with Savrtalfheim. Loki frowned and tapped it again. It returned to bark.

"Why would you want me to leave Jotunheim?" Thor said.

Loki frowned again. Resumed his tapping along the thicket.

"What keeps you there? Some senseless notion of honor?"

"Half of my people have Jotunn lovers," Thor said, for it was true. The Aesir mostly kept below, and the Jotunn to the surface, but his and Jarnsaxa's wasn't the only coupling that had sprung up despite this. "And I have friends there, friends I would help—"

For he had wanted to help his friends in Valhalla, and their days were nothing short of heavenly. Why had he never thought to help the Jotunn who had been friendly towards him? Ealfi, and the others in the palace? Yes, he had been building New Asgard, but that was no excuse. 

"—and my daughter knows Jotunheim as her home, and my son is half-Jotunn—"

Loki hit one side of the thicket, further on, and revealed the grassy veldt of Alfheim. He hit it again and again it was thicket.

"Thrud will do better in a land that doesn't enflame her more savage impulses," he said. "And Magni you can likely bleach Aesir, as Odin did to me."

"I would not deny Magni what he is," Thor said. 

Although Loki ought to have been pleased by this, not to mention ashamed at his own suggestion, he only looked disgruntled. He went a little further down the thicket and resumed his tapping. 

This time, the snow wastes of Jotunheim appeared. Loki pressed the image, manipulated it somehow, bringing them the image of Helblindi's palace. His great hall. An antechamber where Brunnhilde and Sif and Thrud and Magni were, apparently having gone to meet Thor's mother. Thrud bounced her little brother about while she waited. This sight made Thor break into a smile, but Loki only seemed grim. He tapped the image again and then they were staring at the same icy room they had left Frigga, Byleistr, and Helblindi in. The king was now gone, but Frigga and Byleistr remained.

Loki passed a hand over the image, causing it to shimmer.

"The barrier will melt now," he said shortly. "Give it a moment."

Thor leaned against the image, drinking in the sight of his mother, relieved that the All-Winter appeared to be keeping their bargain to not harm the Aesir while he and Loki brought them their prize.

Byleistr's voice floated through the barrier, faint and faraway.

"I don't like this," he was telling Frigga.

"They will return," said Thor's mother, serene.

"No," Byleistr said. "It's not that. We never should have coaxed Loki back, however badly you wanted him here."

Loki, next to Thor, stiffened. Thor put a hand on his arm. When Loki looked at him, betrayal in his eyes, he mouthed, _I did not know._

He hadn't. He was not surprised that his mother had worked to bring Loki back to them. She had missed Loki for centuries, saw in Loki a lost son. But he wished Frigga had included him in this plan of hers. It was not like her to keep something like that secret.

"You still have not told me how you made him return," Frigga was saying now. "I scried for him for years, but Odin's banishment of him was complete and kept him from my sight any time Asgard did not truly need to use him. Or perhaps it was him. Perhaps Loki wanted nothing to do with us."

Byleistr snorted.

"That would be like him. He's more predictable than he knows."

Frigga frowned. 

"He's an enigma to himself," she said, like this made her sad.

"Yet he lives for himself nevertheless," said Byleistr, making Loki start again.

"He was not treated as he should have been," the queen protested. "He was in need of such love—"

Byleistr rolled his eyes. When he spoke, his tone was bitter.

"He carved our father's head from his shoulders! _This_ is the giant that prompts affection in you: a weaselly little brute guilty of patricide."

Loki's mouth thinned, and Thor tightened his grasp on him. On the other side of the barrier, Frigga's mouth thinned as well. Not, Thor knew, at the mention of Laufey's death. Frigga was not squeamish. She understood brutality. Understood, too, envy, the kind which dripped from Byleistr's every word.

"Let us not fight," she said, after a moment. "It seems all we do lately is trade volleys, Prince Byleistr, and you have been a friend to Asgard, so I would have us stay friendly. In any case, soon he and Thor will return with the Ancient Winters—"

Byleistr's laugh was too loud and forced to be anything but theatrical.

"Lady Frigga, don't you know?"

"Know what?" Frigga said.

Now Loki exhaled hard. Why, Thor could not discern. 

Byleistr stood and begun pacing before the seated queen, a wicked little smile on his lips. 

"There is a tale some tell," Byleistr began. 

"You mean a rumor," Frigga said coldly. "Rumors have ever swirled around Loki, as they do around my Thor—"

"I mean that when our father abandoned Loki in the temple, the night Odin came to take the Casket, Groke, wisest of all, saw a way to preserve his winter. That is what I mean, Lady Frigga. I mean that all the power of Groke's winter rests in the one place Odin did not think to seize it."

Byleistr paused. Brought a hand thoughtfully to his chin.

"Well, he didn't think to seize it just then. He demanded the final winter once he figured out where it was, of course."

"What are you talking about?" said the queen, speaking the exact same question Thor wanted to shout through the barrier.

"Loki!" Byleistr snapped. "I speak of Loki! A walking piece of the lost winter of Ymir, the _true_ winter, purer even than Helblindi, and far more dangerous!"

Frigga's face reflected some of the same confusion Thor felt. He knew he was holding Loki very tightly, but he did not want to let him go. If Loki was one of the Ancient Winters, then that meant—

"He will be hurt," Frigga stammered. "To return the Ancient Winters to your great judges is to deliver them _Loki_ , and once they have the power of the other two winters they will be strong enough to, to take him, claim him—"

"I always worried the All-Winter would hurt him," Byleistr said now, rather unconvincingly. "That's why I sent him away. Even if they've been too weak to devour him until now, I was always looking out for him. Because I'm _such_ a good brother."

He stopped and smiled, pleased with himself. The queen, however, twisted her hands together anxiously. Thor, for his part, still could not seem to let go of Loki, nor, he realized now, was Loki letting go of him. They were both of them white-knuckled and breathing hard.

"This is what you were hiding," Thor managed now. "This is what you would not trust me with?"

Loki swallowed, his throat bobbing. He gave Thor a nervous little smile.

"Surprise," he said, like any of this was funny.

Frigga, however, had now risen and begun to pace.

"Our promise to the All-Winter will bring Loki to his doom," she said, still twisting her hands.

"Well, yes," Byleistr said. "Such a pity. But it saves your Thor. And New Asgard. And presumably all of Jotunheim, really."

He sank to his knees before the queen, playing the humble supplicant.

"It pains me _so_ much to lose him," he said. "But I want you to know that I'd trade him gladly for you, my darling."

Frigga stared at him. Thor knew what her answer would be before she said it, for she'd always counted Loki hers. Loki was hers. Or rather, he was theirs. He was not the homeless thing he thought he was — he was _theirs_.

Frigga's slap rang through the barrier.

"You care nothing for your brother! You are a liar, Prince Byleistr, who thinks to curry my favor by hurting one I love!"

At this, Byleistr's false kindness fell away.

"Why do you care care for him?" he said, rising and attempting to grab Frigga by the shoulders. The queen kicked him in the shin. He went down, cursing. Frigga did not seem the least bit sorry and Thor was glad she was not. As soon as this barrier went down, she would have a partner in Byleistr-kicking.

"Do you know what he used to play at?" Byleistr hissed, clutching his leg. 

This seemed a complete nonsequitor, and yet it made Loki say, "No. No, no, no, no, no—"

"What he used to play at, as a pathetic little urchin, hiding away from our father in the Ironwood? That he was king of all Jotunheim, of all the nine realms. What did he call himself? Oh, yes."

"No, no, no, no, _no!_ "

" _The Mighty Angrboda_ ," Byleistr said gleefully. "He doesn't care about you or your son or your New Asgard. He wrote that book. He slandered Thor—"

At this point, the barrier finally gave way and they tumbled into the palace, Thor with a bellow of betrayed rage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Loki wants to kill Byleistr. Thrud wants to kill someone else.


	15. Distractions and Kidnappings

Loki had suffered far too many twists of fate in the past hour, twists to rival those in _The Wicked Brother_. Frigga was responsible for his banishment, and knew of the darkest thing he had ever done; Byleistr appeared to actively loathe him; and the All-Winter likely wanted him dead so they could take back their power. And yet every last one of these developments paled, became insignificant, when he looked at Thor.

Thor could not love him now. Actually, Thor likely loathed him. And, were their situations reversed, Loki would have wanted Loki dead. 

"You wrote that book?" Thor shouted, his face white with fury.

"Oh dear," Byleistr said, without much emotion. "What a time to drop into the conversation."

He really was related to Loki, the bastard. Right now Loki could have killed him, only most of Loki's attention was focused on Thor, who was grinding his teeth in his rage. Loki held up his hands placatingly.

"In my defense, it was never supposed to be published."

"I gave you chance after chance to tell me the truth about what you were hiding," Thor forced out. "I asked you for honesty—"

"I gave you what honesty I could," Loki stammered, for it was true. He'd been more honest with Thor over the past few hours than he had ever been before in his life. It had been excruciating.

"You think of me as that monster, that wicked, raping _murderer_ —"

"I don't!" Loki insisted. "I really don't!"

He looked to Frigga, more out of instinct than anything else, but she was busy holding Thor back, her back to Loki. Perhaps this was by design. Perhaps she would not look at him. She had little reason to care for Loki, and more reason than most to hate him. 

"Please," Loki said. "Let's talk about this."

"You speak only to lie!" Thor said, like he did not even care that now Loki was begging for a chance to tell more truths. 

“Maybe it’s for the best that we have to let him die for the good of all Jotunheim,” Byleistr said. Thor rounded on him, ignoring his mother’s attempts to call him back. 

“And you! As full of schemes and lies as he is!”

That was certainly true, but the contempt in Thor’s tone — contempt for both Jotunn before him — made something in Loki’s breast shatter. 

How stupid he was to feel so broken at this. 

Really, none of this mattered. Not what Thor thought of him, not what Loki had or hadn’t written. The only thing that mattered was whether Loki would help Thor and New Asgard by delivering himself to the All-Winter. And he wouldn’t. He'd known he wouldn’t the very minute Odin had told him he, Loki, was the third winter. Despised by his birth father not simply for his small size, but for what that size contained: untold power, punishing frost. A cold so perfect that once unleashed it would be near-indestructible. 

Laufey had spent Loki’s childhood trying to break him apart, to destroy the makeshift casket that was his eldest child, in order to get that power free and regain the adoration of the All-Winter. Odin had decided it didn’t much matter if it was destroyed, so long as he could use it. 

But Loki cared very much about whether he was destroyed. Loki did not want to die. Thor hated him for writing _The Wicked Brother_ , which was fair enough, but Thor should also hate him for the same reason he had before. Loki was a coward. 

He stepped back now from the tableau before him, Thor and Byleistr hissing scorn at each other, Frigga attempting to calm them both. Then he stepped back again, and again, and again until he hit the wall. But the wall was ice, and easy enough to walk right through. 

In the passage beyond, he caught his breath for a moment. He decided that he would stop feeling as though something had hollowed him out with a knife and left him gutted and bleeding. That was only the normal way he always felt. That was simply how things felt when he did not have Thor. 

_And, really, you stupid thing,_ he thought, as he made his way to his chamber. _You never had him._ You _? And_ Thor _? This isn’t some pathetic fantasy you cooked up on Sakaar, you know._

When he reached his room, he waded into his pool and scried for En Dwi. Sakaar, with all of its casually fun malice, was a thought with some promise, if only he could stop feeling empty for a few moments. If he could pull himself together, he could go to Sakaar. En Dwi cared nothing for saving Jotunheim, and would be extremely unlikely to try and deliver Loki to the All-Winter. He might demand other things Loki had little desire to give him, perversities and stupid little games. But Loki was used to that. It was only that the past twenty four hours — saving Thor, adventuring with Thor, heroics and truths and tender touches — made him want less what En Dwi generally offered him. 

The pool showed him red and white walls. A pleasure room. En Dwi was not in it, but a panicky-looking man was. 

“Your head is floating in mid air!” He stammered, pointing a finger at Loki. “Oh man, oh man, oh man. I cannot keep my cool right now. I think I’m on another planet—“

“Tell your Grandmaster that Loki will be coming,” Loki forced out. 

“My what?” gaped the man. “Oh, that _lunatic_? He thinks I’m — well. Not me. Uh, yeah, the other guy, that’s the one he’s made his Champion—“

Loki, who didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about and also didn’t care, now spoke over him with no small sense of irritation. 

“Slave. Tell him. Loki. Returns. To Sakaar.”

“Slave? Hey, you’re not very polite! And I’m not a slave. You know how many Ph.D.s I have? Seven!”

“You could have an infinitesimal number of every single letter of your inadequate little alphabet and it wouldn’t matter to me,” Loki snapped. “Deliver him my message or suffer.”

Then he cut the connection. He sat for a few minutes in the freezing water, drawing what little comfort he could from the chill. He realized now that, with the day he had had, he was weary down to his bones. But he'd to leave. It was the only possible option. 

_If I stay, Byleistr will make sure I’m taken to the All-Winter. And it’s not as if staying will bring Thor back around to my side. Not now._

So why wasn’t he moving? Packing up his things? Why was he simply soaking here, in the chilly gloom of his chambers, as if something rooted him to the spot?

One possible explanation was simply that he was exhausted. He decided this was the explanation he would trust in, this convenient lie. Then he dragged himself out of the pool and set about preparing to leave. He vanished the pool and the furniture he had shaped for himself. In the great bare space that was left, he turned over chunks of decorative icework trying to find his few possessions. His cloak, his spare boots. A copy of _The Wicked Brother_. 

That he broke to shreds with his bare hands, ripping pages, letting little paper cuts blossom on his fingers. 

He didn't heal them. The livid little welts winked painfully at him, but this was like the bruise on his cheek, before. It was a pain that at least felt normal, felt correct.

When the book was destroyed, he rang for a servant. Ealfi was the one who appeared. Apparently the very universe meant to torment Loki by flaunting all those who could claim a connection to Thor. 

“Deliver this to the Ladies Sif and Brunnhilde. They are in the far antechamber in the East Wing, the one right by the stables. They will not be difficult for you to find,” Loki said, reaching into his extradimensional pocket and pulling out the two winters he had retrieved, both Hel’s and Valhalla’s. 

Perhaps two winters would buy the Aesir enough time to flee Jotunheim for a better realm, a paradise. 

Ealfi bowed and went. Loki set about sketching a quick five-pointed travel spell on the floor. It would be an ungainly thing when he was done with it, but it would get him at least to Sakaar. And if En Dwi knew he was coming then all the byways there would be open anyway, which would be helpful in the event that Loki’s exhaustion and lack of focus landed him somewhere else instead. 

He was putting the finishing touches on the spell when the door to his chamber opened.

“What now?” Loki demanded, without looking up from his work. “Yes, you forgot to offer me shaved ice, but I don’t want it, you idiot—“

“Uncle Loki!” said Thrud. “Uncle Loki, you have to help us!”

Loki jerked his head up, catching sight of her. She was wearing mismatched shoes, an oversized woolen shirt over a grubby woolen pinafore, and her hair had been plaited into two fat, inexpert blond braids. In her arms she held her younger brother, who was currently cooing and smacking his snake rattle into the air. 

_Oh, Norns_ , Loki thought. 

Why had the children even been brought here?

He must have said that aloud, though. Thrud stamped her foot and cried, “No one brought us. We wanted to find you, but my mothers followed us!”

“Why?” Loki said. 

“So we wouldn’t try to find you!”

“No, I mean why were you and Magni looking for me?” Loki said. “You, I mean. Not Magni.”

Magni had all the cognitive capacity of a snow-owl at this age, and Loki highly doubted he’d been seeking his erstwhile uncle. Magni didn’t even like him. He usually started screaming the very second he caught sight of Loki’s face. 

“I think he hates me,” Loki admitted. 

“He doesn’t,” said Thrud. “But he hates Jarnsaxa, and you look like him.”

This did make sense. Despite all his rush to leave, despite the hollowness inside him, Loki took a moment to test the theory. He bleached himself, then crept up to the baby. When Magni saw him, he gurgled happily. Loki reached out and gently took him from his sister, swaying him a bit to make him laugh. Then Loki went blue again. 

Magni began screaming, the snake rattle flailing wildly in his enraged grip. 

“See?” Thrud said. 

Loki went Aesir-pale again, before the snake could smack him in the face. The change in Magni was instantaneous. His screams gave way to relieved sniffles, his chubby little fingers scrambled at Loki’s chin. 

“That heinous Islands witch has made him despise his own kind,” Loki realized. 

He didn't know why, but the thought made him rage at Jarnsaxa. He pulled the child close. He did not, as a rule, like children, but if this were his child, if he'd been the one Thor was foolish enough to marry, then he knew without a doubt Magni would not be so confused. 

_I would make you a spoiled, dreadful little thing,_ Loki thought. _You would be disgustingly proud, blue and mine, and very, very pleased to be so._

Magni babbled something at him. Loki, without really thinking about it, blew a raspberry at him in order to make Magni laugh again. Magni had a stupid gurgle for a laugh, but it lightened Loki’s mood slightly nevertheless. 

Thrud, in the meantime, had decided to hop her way up to the bundle that was Loki’s cloak and boots. She took a seat on it, explaining what had driven her here all the while. 

“Sten went with grandmother to see father’s trial. And then he came back alone and said the All-Winter didn’t like father, so probably they will give Magni to Jarnsaxa. But it was one of our days to have Magni so I made Sten distract mothers so I could kidnap Magni and bring him to you—“

“Who in all the snows is Sten?” Loki said. 

“The barrelmaker,” Thrud said, like this should be obvious. “He’s a very smart man. He helped get me here before mother and mother trounced him and sent him home—“

“They should have trounced you,” Loki said. “Why did you think coming to _me_ would help at all?”

Thrud stared at him like she thought he was very stupid. 

“Uncle Loki,” she said slowly. “The time has come. We have to make our move.”

“Our what?”

“Jarnsaxa. You have to kill him.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I can’t ask father to kill him because he won’t do it,” Thrud said reasonably. “Father’s scared people will think he’s like Angrboda, and he doesn’t like killing things anyway, even though he could kill lots of things with his thunder and lightning if he wanted to. But he won’t do it. He's never even once showed me how to kill people with thunder, not even a little bit. But you’re a wicked witch and much more interesting than father, so Magni and I have come to you.”

Loki discovered that he’d begun coughing or choking, one of the two. The actions seemed to be bleeding into each other. Certainly, he couldn’t seem to get a reply out. 

“Thrud Thorsdottir,” he managed, after a few minutes, “you absolute Odinspawn, you evil little—“

Thrud grinned, gap-toothed. “I’m very blackhearted,” she said, with confidence. “It’s one of my strengths.”

“I’m not going to kill Jarnsaxa for you,” Loki said. 

Thrud’s face fell. 

“Could you teach me how to use magic to kill him? Father won't. Can you?"

“No,” Loki lied. 

“Could you trap him in another dimension?”

"No," he lied again.

"Turn him to stone?"

“No!”

“Kick him into the ocean and then look the other way when he shrieks and cries about how he can’t swim?”

“No!” Loki said, yet again. “And he can probably swim!”

“Oh, stuff,” Thrud swore. “Well, then I guess the ocean is out. And fine. I’ll just find a way to get rid of him, then. Please look after Magni in the meantime.”

She stood, two-and-a-half feet of utter purpose and determination. Loki had to scramble to shift Magni onto his hip so that he could grab her with his other hand, seize on her scratchy woolen collar. 

“Uncle Loki!” she shrieked. “What are you doing? This is no way to treat an enemy!”

“We’re not enemies. You’re my adoptive niece,” Loki said. “And you will behave yourself and trust in your parents to fix things for Magni, not run around murdering people. I was murdering things at your age, and believe me: it’s less fun than it sounds.”

Not quite at her age. He’d been perhaps a little younger when Odin had taken him and set him to every dark design that had propped up the Asgardian throne. But Thrud didn’t know that. 

“How am I supposed to believe you if I don’t get the chance to try it for myself?” she demanded, as Loki dragged her to the door. “That’s the beauty of practical, hands-on learning!”

She kept on in this vein, wheedling and reasoning by turns, as Loki carried her into the hall like a scruffed kitten. He couldn't ring for a servant because now both of his hands were occupied, so he would have to get her down to her mothers himself. But that was fine. It didn't escape him that Thrud had seen his packed things and positioned herself right on top of them, as though she knew he planned to leave and had considered, momentarily, trying to stop him. Pinning him with her younger brother served the same purpose. No, Thor’s daughter was too clever to trust to a servant. Loki would only be able to leave comfortably if he knew that she was safe with her mothers. 

By the time they reached the East Wing, she was actively trying to bite him. 

“If you sink your teeth into my wrist, you’ll get the frost poisoning,” Loki lied. 

“Really?” Thrud said. “What’s the frost poisoning?”

“It’s when the ice in a frost giant’s veins sneaks into your veins through your mouth and begins freezing you, so that your blood stops pumping into your heart and your body becomes blue and brittle, and then you fall over and shatter into a million little pieces,” Loki said. 

Thrud sighed. 

“I wish I could give people the frost poisoning,” she said sadly. 

By now they were at the hall that lead to the stables. Loki tried to steer her past it, but Thrud redoubled her efforts to fight him and he discovered that she was a strong little creature. Her aim was good, her kicks were forceful, and she even let off glimmering little burning sparks, signs of strong magic building in her despite her young age. She managed to drag him partly in the direction of the stables. 

“How are you so strong?” Loki demanded. “You’re not three feet tall!”

“I’m a bruiser!” Thrud cried, struggling against him. “I’m tougher than you can believe! All you pretty, soft big giants don’t know how to take me!”

She struggled out of his grip and was off for the stables. Loki followed, swearing and trying not to jostle Magni too much. Up ahead, he heard Thrud give another little shriek. He hoped that meant she’d stumbled on one of her mothers, not that she was clever enough to know she could lure Loki with sounds of distress. 

He tried not to think about what it meant that she _could_ lure him with sounds of distress. 

But it was no lure. Several dead slaves were piled at the entrance to the stables. Behind their stiff bodies, a swan trilled at him. Jarnsaxa stood silhouetted in the gloom, lovely as a jewel. He had Thrud by the hair. 

“How did _you_ get my darling little Magni?” he said crossly, when he caught sight of Loki. “Drat. Was it Thor’s week again? Thrym, my love, take care of this, please.”

Then pain blossomed across the back of Loki’s skull and he knew no more. 

-

He woke to the sound of Magni crying and Thrud cursing in her Thrud way. 

“Stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff—“

“Make her stop!” Jarnsaxa wailed. “She’s making my darling cry!”

A shadow fell over Loki. A giant’s arm, looking so like Laufey’s that Loki’s reaction was instinctive and atavistic. He threw his weight in the direction of Thrud’s voice and was satisfied (satisfied?) when the giant’s fist connected with him instead. The pain left him wordless and seeing spots. 

“You hit him!” Thrud shrieked. 

“I meant to hit you,” Thrym rumbled. 

Before Thrud could say anything, Loki found his way to her little mouth — his hands were tied together, how odd — and covered it as best he could. 

“Please be quiet, Thrud,” he managed. 

Thrud fell quiet. So, oddly enough, did Magni. 

“...oki,” Magni said. 

Thrud took in a sharp breath. So did Loki, though he couldn’t tell why. Magni had only met him a few times. He probably wasn’t trying to say ‘Loki.’

“Yes, darling, it’s just a little jokey, hitting that awful Thrud,” Jarnsaxa cooed now. At the sound of his mother’s voice, Magni began to scream again. 

“Oh, honestly!” Jarnsaxa said. “Why couldn’t we bring any slaves along?”

As the spots cleared from Loki’s eyes, he saw that not only were his hands tied, so were his feet, with coils of feathery rope that he had the irritating feeling might have been woven from something swan-related. Whatever they were woven from, they most assuredly dampened his magic. He couldn’t seem to conjure, change his form, or go invisible. 

But when he tried for ice, he at least summoned a thin layer of frost. It seemed his winter magic, the Ancient Winter tangled up with his other abilities, could not be suppressed. 

This wasn't likely to get him far, though. He and Thrud were at one end of a vast longboat that was being pulled by giant swans. Thrud, too, was trussed up with special ropes. Jarnsaxa sat in the center of the boat, harshly bobbing his child and pleading with Magni to be quiet. Thrym was there as well, and four other giants Loki recognized as highly-placed in Thrym’s clan. No one else. Fog curled over the sides of the boat, signaling that they were currently near the Ice Islands.

Thrym’s necklaces jangled as he caught one of his lieutenants about the ear and shoved him at Jarnsaxa. 

“Take the babe and make him quiet,” he ordered. 

The giant took Magni gingerly from his mother’s arms. Jarnsaxa said, “oh, my darling!” several times in the process, but once Magni had been taken to the far end of the longboat, sighed with relief. 

“I’m sure he will behave himself once we reach the passage to Svartalfheim,” he assured Thrym.

 _Svartalfheim?_ Loki thought, with a sinking heart. 

That sinking heart must have shown on his face, for Jarnsaxa caught sight of him now and rose gracefully, coming to their side of the longboat. 

“Oh, Prince Loki,” he tsked. “If you hadn't been seduced by that beastly Thor, poisoned by his lies, then we could have been dear friends, you and I.”

“Yuck,” said Thrud. 

“Shhh,” said Loki, not wanting her to be hit again. 

“I thought you understood,” Jarnsaxa continued. “I thought you of all people would know the pain of being small, yet nobly born. Weakly built, yet ever so magical. Delicate, yet beautiful, so beautiful!”

Here he paused and actually looked at Loki, who had started the past day rather tired and bedraggled, then been rattled by the screaming of the All-Winter, burned into a false death, chased by a wolf, thrown from a window, beaten by Hela, consumed by winter, thrown from another window, and debauched on the dirty floor of a forest. 

“Alright,” Jarnsaxa allowed. “Maybe not that last one. You’re not especially beautiful.”

“I told you we should have killed him,” Thrud whispered. 

“Shhh!” Loki said again. 

Jarnsaxa, thankfully, did not hear the exchange. 

“I should have known you had been seduced when you began asking me about Thor. I should have known you were desperate for those golden muscles of his, that wicked smile! Oh, I'll bet you spread your legs as readily as I did—”

“We really should have killed him,” Thrud said again, unhelpfully. “Look at him. Now he’s monologuing.”

This time she had a point, so Loki didn’t even bother shushing her. Also, he was experimenting with freezing the magical ropes that bound him, as he suspected that if he froze them through he might make them brittle enough to snap off. 

“But really, is it so terrible that one as lovely as myself wishes to be adored by a person of stature, Prince Loki? Is it so wrong? I am the pride of the Ice Islands, the treasure of the great frost ocean! I so longed to find one as glorious as me, to glitter like a jewel on the arm of a king! But all I got was a warmongering Aesir brute who hid his savagery from me, who did not trust me with the dark, illicit power I could have loved him for—“

Ah. So Thor had never eaten Jarnsaxa out in the dirt by the base of the world tree. Well. Good. 

Also good: the rope was indeed going brittle, little by little. And Jarnsaxa wasn’t at all noticing. 

“Tell me,” the lovely giant sneered now. “Did he shower you with his cold, cunning gaze? Seduce you with it? Indeed, he was clever enough to go for you, the innocent pawn of the royal house—“

The ropes were ready to snap, but Loki had to pause at that. 

“Excuse me?” he said dangerously. 

“—because he realized that I was not to be seduced! I was always his equal," Jarnsaxa said. "Meant to be the true partner of a king!"

"But now you're with Thrym, and he's not a king," Loki pointed out, not sure he wouldn't be hit again for such a comment, but entirely sure he wanted Jarnsaxa distracted. 

"Not yet," Jarnsaxa said. "But we only need to get Helblindi out of the way, don't we?"

He tried for an evil grin, but, being Jarnsaxa and terribly beautiful, managed only a radiant smile. 

"You see, we all know you've been stirring war between Vanaheim and Svartalfheim, Prince Loki, as the tool of the crown."

"You've been what?" Thrud whispered now, sounding impressed.

"It's not a good thing!" Loki hissed. "Don't admire me for it!"

This was Odin's granddaughter and Hela's niece he was dealing with, and suddenly it occurred to him that he was doing a very bad job, uncle-wise, of not setting off all the worst impulses in Thrud's bloodline. Thrud would be better off admiring someone decent and good, like her father. 

Meanwhile, Jarnsaxa was still monologuing.

"Svartalfheim has agreed to pay you back in kind for all the trouble you have caused them. Thrym and I have been in contact with them for some time, and when you betrayed us before the All-Winter our next steps became clear. The dark elves shall distract your royal brother by taking you hostage. That is why we went to the palace to kidnap you today!"

Loki tested the rope. It would snap, but it would not do so soundlessly. But if he could get Jarnsaxa shrieking, that would drown out the noise.

“But your plan was interrupted by Thor's own child, an innocent who happened upon your wicked plot,” Loki prompted. 

"Innocent? _Her_?" Jarnsaxa shrieked, right on cue. Loki snapped the rope. He did little beyond that, however, not wanting Jarnsaxa to realize he had snapped the rope. He could feel a little of his magic coming back, but there were still the ropes on his feet to contend with. 

Thrud, meanwhile, was smiling happily as Jarnsaxa unleashed a barrage on insults on her. She was luckily still half hidden behind Loki, so Jarnsaxa could not see she was smiling, but Loki could. He gestured at his freed hands with his chin, just to see her smile widen.

"Do mine!" Thrud whispered.

"In a moment," Loki whispered back. He discovered that, with more of his magic, he could just while away the ropes on his feet and put an illusion in their place. That was useful.

To Jarnsaxa he said, "You've kidnapped me to distract Helblindi? Distract him from what?"

"From our conquest of the Aesir," Thrym said now, coming up to their side of the boat. "While the king struggles to reclaim your dead, tortured body from Svartalfheim, we shall close on them. Jarnsaxa's slaves are small enough to be driven into the Lands Below, promised their freedom if they bring back five dead Asgardians apiece. And once the All-Winter sees that _I_ have freed Jotunheim from these warmongers, they shall crown _me_ king!"

It was a simple plan, and not a bad one given the All-Winter's hatred of Thor and his people, but it also seemed somewhat similar to Thrud's earlier kidnapping-and-distraction activities. Enough that Loki frowned. He was almost insulted, to be kidnapped by these people. If _he_ wanted to be king, he would have just killed Helblindi outright and then pretended to be him. No swans, hostages, or Svartalfheim would be necessary.

"And Thrud?" he said now, as he shifted just enough to get the child fully behind him so he could vanish away her ropes without being detected. "What shall you do with her?"

Thrym shrugged, making all his golden necklaces jangle.

"We could just kill her," he told Jarnsaxa.

Jarnsaxa proved to have one small shred of decency.

"Not before Magni!" he insisted. "That is his sister! And I won't kill a child."

Loki almost let out a sigh of relief, but then Thrym said, "Fine. Let's let the elves do it."

Jarnsaxa, to his credit, frowned at this. As he and Thrym fell to arguing, Loki reached into his pocket and felt around for something. There it was. Dental floss. It could be used to clean his teeth, conjured into a snake, and was suitable for no fewer than fifteen sex tricks. But just the snake would do now, though it would have to be rather a large one, and timed right.

And they would need to get Magni. 

"Thrud, I need to grab your brother and work a complicated little spell, and distractions are the order of the day," Loki whispered now. Though he'd vanished her ropes, she'd astutely stayed perfectly quiet behind him, waiting for instructions. He appreciated that. 

"Can it be any distraction I want?" Thrud whispered back.

"Absolutely any one you want," Loki said. "I can conjure you a knife, if it will help."

"I don't need one," Thrud decided. "But yes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you weren't expecting that fourth revenger to show up!
> 
> Next chapter: a really big snake.


	16. The Hour of Rescues

The more Thor raged against Prince Byleistr, the more he realized that his anger was running sideways, like a stream misdirected. He was coiled tight with fury, but it was a relief, somehow, to vent it at Byleistr and not at Loki.

He was angry with Loki, but that Loki was a trickster and a liar and full of dramatic little stories, tales he spun to the detriment of others—well. That was, depressingly, not as much of a surprise as it should have been. But it was surprising that his true-born brother, the giant who had invited Loki back in the first place, so despised him.

"Did you suggest Loki go to Hel instead of my mother to—what? Get rid of him?" Thor found himself demanding.

"Better him than the queen," Byleistr said blithely. He was not looking at Thor, but at Frigga. "It is harder for repeat visitors to escape the realms of the dead, and I would not have Queen Frigga trapped there."

"I think what Thor means," Frigga said, gliding over all of the implications of Byleistr's feelings as though they were non-essential, "is why do you hate Loki so much?"

She glanced over her shoulder, likely at Loki, who Thor supposed was standing somewhere behind them now. Thor could not look at him. If he looked, he would rage, and it was better to rage at Byleistr.

Byleistr breathed out audibly through his nose, visibly irritated.

"I do not hate him! I simply know him for the threat he is! Loki is a walking piece of Ymir's winter, a being of great power, but he cares only for himself. He has no real loyalty to anything."

Now Thor did turn. His rage was now tangled with concern, with fear at what it would mean for Loki to hear this expressed. It was not a lie, but perhaps a cruel truth, and Loki had always been particularly vulnerable to that sort of thing.

Loki was gone. Frigga had noticed before Thor and was already making for the door.

"These fights have no purpose," she informed Thor and Byleistr. "We must find him and plan how best to preserve him while still keeping our bargain with the All-Winter. This will take all our combined cunning, mine and both of yours _and_ his."

She reached for the great double-doors which separated this parlor from the rest of the palace. They sprang open before she even touched them.

Brunnhilde and Sif stood in the doorway. Between them, they propped up the massive king of Jotunheim, who was groaning softly. Thor's mind raced. Had Loki done this? Had Loki fled, rather than be turned over to the All-Winter, and in the process harmed Helblindi?

"Do you know," Sif said icily, "what your daughter did?"

Oh.

Wait. What?

"Our daughter, surely," Thor said. "And no?"

Helblindi groaned again. When he spoke, his speech was slurred. 

"I asked if she would like me to ring for yak's milk, for myself and the babe. When a servant fetched it, she handed me my cup. After that, I do not remember."

"She gave the king frostflower root," Sit said, tone sharp. "Slipped it into into his drink and then slipped off with Magni. No doubt to find Loki, who taught her the trick in the first place with all his chattering talk of frost flower this and mistletoe that."

"See? Chaos follows Loki everywhere," Byleistr said now, but Thor made a harsh motion at him to get him to shut up.

"Where is Thrud now? And Loki? And Magni?"

Brunnhilde seemed to have enough of carrying the giant king at this point and let him drop. His whole left side slid down, and his right nearly took Sif before Sif, too, let him go. Brunnhilde crossed her arms, her expression grim.

"All gone," she said. "And what's worse is—honestly? We can't make heads or tails of it. Because I'm fairly sure Thrud didn't kill Helblindi's stable slaves."

" _What_?" Thor said. 

This necessitated a palace search. As Thor helped Sif and Brunnhilde bring Helblindi to a long, low couch, Byleistr called the palace guards and demanded they examine the chaos in the stables and try to find Loki and the children. 

None were found. Loki's chambers were bare, save for the workings of what Frigga deemed to be a half-finished travel spell and a small pack on the floor: his cloak and boots. The children did not seem to be hiding anywhere. And in the stables, there were indeed six or seven dead slaves. None that Thor had known, but they were still people. And their bloated pale blue bodies promised that nothing good could have happened to Loki, Thrud, and Magni.

One guard did turn up a piece of fabric, caught in the door, with the black glimmer that characterized a banner of Svartalfheim.

"Ah yes," Byleistr said softly. "Loki has had a rather incendiary effect on the dark elves."

"What do you mean?" Thor demanded.

"You didn't know? He's our resident war bringer. Keeping the more powerful realms occupied, and so Jotunheim safe. So practiced at telling those bombastic little lies of his — he learned those in your court, with your great Allfather — that he had the Vanir and the dark elves at each other's throats within fifty years of the fall of Asgard."

If this was true, it was disgraceful. But again it was Byleistr Thor longed to beat into the ground for it, not Loki. Loki could do more, be more, than a liar and a chaos-bringer. While beings like Byleistr, like Thor's own father, they pointed Loki towards chaos to keep their own hands clean, and then judged him for it. 

Thor crouched near the stable door, where the scrap of glimmering dark fabric was lodged, and regarded it with no small amount of exhaustion.

 _Are you safe?_ he thought. _I think you are._

Loki could take care of himself. It was the children — _Thor's_ children — who were the real worry, who made Thor's hands clammy with fear, and yet he couldn't help but tangle Loki up in thoughts of them. Would Loki keep them safe? Could one who did the things Loki did, who lied through his teeth and spread mischief and ruin, keep them safe?

 _I trust that you will,_ Thor decided.

It was less painful than trusting otherwise. 

Brunnhilde cleared her throat loudly. Thor turned to her. She and Frigga were examining something that had been caught in one of the dead slaves' hands. 

A gold-silver feather. It looked familiar.

"Yeah, I think we can presume that if the queen scries for Svartalfheim, she won't find anything," Brunnhilde said. "I don't think they have giant swans on Svartalfheim."

-

Frigga took the glimmering fabric and the swan feather in hand. Then she strode back to the receiving parlor, where she sunk a pool into the ice floor with no more effort than a firm nod of her chin (though Thor knew this took great effort, this method she had invented) and waded in, pressing her fingers to the water and searching first for what the feather showed her.

The rest fanned out around her — Sif, Byleistr, Brunnhilde, even Helblindi, who was holding his head like it pained him.

Thor couldn't bring himself to look at the visions his mother was calling up, just in case his faith in Loki was misplaced. Just in case she did find Thrud or Magni, but at the bottom of the ocean. Instead he crossed the parlor to where Sif and Brunnhilde were talking, heads bent together. He could hear their self-recrimination before he reached them.

"—my fault," Sif was saying.

"How in the Norns could it be yours? I'm the idiot who rushed to help Helblindi," Brunnhilde said.

Thor put a hand on her shoulder. Both she and Sif snapped to attention, guilt in their eyes.

"Do you know how many times I've lost her?" Thor said. "Once she wandered off and I caught her reading _The Wicked Brother_."

Aesir children were hearty and Thrud heartier than most, and mischievous besides. And it seemed today she had been up to more than her usual tricks. And if anyone was responsible for those, it was Thor. He'd always been ill-suited to being Thrud's parent. She was a bright, cheerfully horrible little thing, the sort who needed both a guiding hand and an attentive challenge to keep her occupied. Thor would be the first to admit that he often failed her on both counts. He was too busy building a kingdom to give her the guidance or attention she needed, like his own father before him. He could not even help her control her bursts of wild, sparking magic, so like his own, because the only way _he_ had learned at that age had been with a hammer, and he had not even a hammer to offer Thrud. 

"She was upset when she learned you'd lost before the All-Winter, and that Magni would likely go to Jarnsaxa," Sif said now, shaking her head. "So she went off with her brother."

"I should have spoken to her before I left for the realms of the dead," Thor said, swallowing past the lump in his throat. "I could have avoided all of this."

Brunnhilde shifted from foot to foot now, all nervous warrior energy.

"So it's true, then, what Helblindi said? You and Loki went to the lands of the dead? And those strange, gloomy things that servant brought us, those are the Ancient Winters of Jotunheim?"

"Two of them," Thor said truthfully.

Now he remembered something. He reached into his pocket, gently shoving aside the kitten-rabbit that was still slumbering there. Underneath it, he found Gunilla's token.

Brunnhilde took it with shaking hands.

"How is she?"

"She seems well," Thor said. He shot a significant look at Sif. "They are all well. Valhalla is, if not the paradise we were promised, then still a place of great rest and calm, a place where all are at peace."

"All?" Brunnhilde said. Her tone was sharp. Thor squinted at her. 

Was it something all the Valkyries had discussed, once? Planned? That Valhalla might bring joy to all, save one? Save the king that had so misused them? That they would gladly serve the realm as long as the realm trapped its king there? Valhalla was a place, not a living thing. But then maybe it was both. Jotunheim was both. Still, to presume that the Valkyries had allied themselves with it in order to trap Odin...

 _No,_ Thor thought. _No, surely that’s taking things too far._

"If you're wondering whether we wanted Odin to rot there, the answer is yes," Brunnhilde said, rolling her eyes.

Or perhaps it was taking things just far enough. 

"I trust that my father is as much to blame, for what Valhalla does to him,” Thor said carefully. 

If it imprisoned Odin, then it did so thanks to Odin himself. For that realm was made of his father's dreams and impulses, as Hel was made for his sister.

"He certainly crafted a strong sort of hold," Brunnhilde said. "As for us, all we did was have a word with the Norns about all the power allotted to your father."

Thor could feel his eyebrows climbing at this. He wasn't sure how the Norns factored into it. And it was strange that Sif appeared entirely unruffled by all this. Sif had been an Asgardian partisan and therefore an Odin partisan all her life. There was only one being in Asgard she had ever been more more loyal to, and that was—

"She doesn't mean that she did anything traitorous," Sif put in now, sensing the direction of his thoughts. "They—the Valkyries _saved_ you, Thor."

"Did they?"

"Sometimes the Norns see two paths," Brunnhilde said. "Two ways of going forward. Sometimes they sit and puzzle over which lives to end, which to extend. And when your father proposed that Asgard burn, well. Let us just say that it was no secret to those of us who had spoken to the Norns that the fall of Asgard would come to pass. The only question was who should be the one burn along with Surtur's crown."

 _No,_ Thor's mother had said, just before the fall of Asgard. _Thor is not king, and what you demand is the sacrifice of the king._

And when Odin had looked prepared to argue, the Valkyries had appeared at Frigga's side. For they'd returned while Thor and Odin had been fighting for their lives, returned and helped get Thor's people to safety. Returned to, they said, answer to Asgard and the queen.

So, in the end, Odin had been simply outnumbered. How strange. In one light, his death was noble and sacrificial. But seen by another light, it was not like that at all. It was the death of a trickster finally caught on the wrong end of trick. Thor closed his eye and breathed in hard, trying to make sense of it.

"Thank you for bringing me this, by the way,” Brunnhilde said. Thor opened his eye and caught the way her fingers traced the pale hair wrapped around Gunilla's pipe. 

For her part, Sif said, "Are you alright, Thor?"

"Me?" Thor said.

Sif nodded. "You walked out of heaven, and right into this mess. Two children we foolishly put in harm's way and a lover who might have betrayed you." 

She put a hand on Thor's shoulder to comfort him. Instead, her words jarred him away from the muted pain that Odin would likely cause him all his life, and into the fresh pain of today. He still couldn't bring himself to look back at Frigga scrying in her pool, for fear that they would find the children and it would be terrible. But now one word caught inside his mind and stabbed at him.

Betrayed.

That was how he felt. He had not wanted to feel anger, so he had tried to redirect that at Byleistr. But he could not redirect the betrayal. Angrboda, that twisted mirror to Thor, had been dreamed up by Loki. That was what Loki thought of him. Loki had turned him into a monster, a murderer, a thing that stalked after the innocent. How could there ever be anything like trust between them, if this was what Loki thought of him?

 _Is it Odin he sees in me?_ Thor thought wearily. _Or does he think me a separate monster entirely? Because of how I failed him when he first came to Asgard?_

Why had Loki bothered to defend Thor to the All-Winter, then? Why had he cared to?

"I've found them," Thor's mother said suddenly. Across the room, even Helblindi straightened up. 

Thor forced himself to look at the image in the scrying pool. He could not see Magni, and Loki and Thrud were bound, but aside from that they seemed safe enough. They were in some sort of boat.

Thor felt his whole body shudder with relief. 

"They're near the Isle of Fog," Byleistr said, leaning over the pool to point out the wisps of mist that curled around Loki and Thrud's heads. "And I recognize this longboat. It's Thrym's."

"We must go to save them," Thor said immediately.

At this, Sif snorted and said, without real rancor, "The children, at least. I think Loki can save himself."

That was true. But Thor would still help him, if he could do so and still manage to save the children. Thor was not the beast Loki plainly felt he was. Thor would not be that beast, not with Loki, not if he could help it. 

That was why the betrayal hurt so. He loved Loki, tangled and confusing thing that Loki was. 

\- 

Because they would have to cross the ocean, they took not mole-bears, but great-winged snow owls, softly hooting beasts the size of small houses. Thor could have flown on his own, using his thunder, but that power was best harnessed when he was forced to focus. He was not focused now. He was worried, he still smarted from Loki's betrayal. So he did not trust himself not to crack the planet with his thunder. He took a snow owl like the others did. 

He'd assumed it would be only him, Sif, Brunnhilde, and perhaps some of the palace guard going, but three surprises attached themselves to the party. 

The first was Frigga, who at her son’s faint protests only rolled her eyes, conjured herself a sword and some battle armor, and said, “Please, Thor. This is for my grandchildren and for Loki.”

The next was King Helblindi, who despite his wooziness snapped at the guards who tried to hold him back and clobbered more than one palace slave in an attempt to demand his own armor. 

"You think I will force the lovely Valkyries to stand alone and defend my realm from Thrym?" he roared. "To take back my brother, as though I cannot do it? I am the tallest and purest giant on Jotunheim! They shall see me fight alongside the greatest warriors of the realm!"

The third surprise was Byleistr. Both Thor and Frigga sent him quelling looks as he saddled his snow owl. Byleistr appeared to be pretending not to notice, but at a growl from Thor he cracked.

"I would not see your grandchildren in harm's way, my queen," he told Frigga. "And whatever I think of Loki, I do not want Thrym to have him."

Frigga sighed. Though she plainly did not return Byleistr's rather venomous affection, she had also faced far worse than him, and so she only shot Thor a somewhat resigned look. Thor half-expected her to mouth, _this silly little stripling!_ the way she generally did when younger and more foolish persons annoyed her, but she kept calm instead.

"Prince Byleistr, if you save the ones I love, then all will be forgiven between us."

That fact that she had not said _grandchildren_ hung in the air for a moment. So, too, was what she had left unspoken. That if Thrud, Magni, or Loki was hurt, Byleistr would be likely to lose what lingering affection she might have for him. 

Thor, however, wondered if that would be enough to keep Byleistr from betraying his brother. Betraying all of them, as he and Frigga had no intention of delivering Loki to the All-Winter once they found him. As their owls took flight, Thor angled his close behind that of the second prince, keeping an eye on Byleistr.

Though the skies they navigated were dark, spangled only by Jotunheim's distant moons, it was light enough. The endless white span below them let off its own light, the wintry light of Jotunheim. Thor had to wonder if, as the realm's snows melted, it would begin to resemble instead the black tar and lava of Muspelheim. He hoped not. That was one realm he had never been able to abide. He'd tried asking Ymir about it once, but either the giant could not speak or was too concerned with his pain to consider what he was doing to the planet.

Up ahead, the great blue-black sea stretched. Here the stars seemed to make an extra effort to shine, in order to combat the inky dark that would otherwise consume this end of the realm. Their party was making good time as they sped towards the Ice Islands, but now they all urged their owls on faster. They needed to make better time, not merely good time. Too much time had already been wasted with yelling at Byleistr, with the search for Loki and the children, with scrying and with calling for their weapons. Thor's axe had been brought from the Lands Below, a comforting weight that he wished he'd thought to bring sooner. Really, he should have taken it to the realms of the dead. But he was surprised to discover that arming himself was no longer instinctive. He would always thrill for a good battle, for three centuries had not changed him _that_ much. But they had made him less quick to violence, less prone to seeing a fight as the first resort.

Though here it might be the only resort. Loki and Thrud had looked well and truly bound, and the vessel they were on, according to Frigga and Byleister, seemed set for a part of the realm that contained a shadow-passage to Svartalfheim. 

"Heavily guarded, but mostly by Jarnsaxa's people," Byleistr had said, frowning. 

So the general contours of a plan to kidnap Loki emerged, and Jarnsaxa no doubt believed himself entitled to kidnap Magni. Thor was not entirely sure why Jarnsaxa and Thrym had also taken Thrud, but then if his daughter was anything like Thor himself, she was the sort to have a knack for finding trouble. When they spied the first tendrils of mist that banked the Isle of Fog on the horizon, Thor brought his owl swooping low over the ocean and had to hold himself back from calling for her. Much as Thor wanted to roar across the ocean and demand her, Magni, and Loki's safe return, that would only alert their kidnappers. 

When they reached the fog bank, all the others dropped low as well. It was harder here to scan the waters for the sight of the kidnappers' vessel. They sped low over the ocean, fanning out and then returning to each other at intervals to shake their heads: nothing spotted yet.

Then Sif gave a whoop. The others urged their steeds on after hers and discovered a strange sight. Some ways off from the Isle of Fog, the ocean was littered with silver-gold swan feathers and the slowly-sinking halves of a longboat.

Thor's heart sank. He urged his owl on. He could make out now the forms of several frost giants: Thrym, Jarnsaxa, and at least four lieutenants, scattered across both halves of the wreckage. Loki, Thrud, and Magni were nowhere to be seen.

Now Thor did roar, with fright and rage. He dropped onto the nearest half of the longboat, the half with Jarnsaxa, and grabbed the slender giant by the throat. Jarnsaxa gave a shriek.

"Where are they?" Thor demanded. 

Jarnsaxa's tear-streaked face twisted into an expression that was almost, _almost_ ugly. 

"Why are you asking me?" he said, shoving ineffectually at Thor. "Your lover did this! Told your horrible little imp to stab me! And took my baby!"

Thor stared around at the devastation. Two of the lieutenants were bleeding. On the other half of the slowly-sinking vessel, the other two crouched low in front of Thrym, who now faced a grim Helblindi flanked by a pair of Valkyries.

"Loki did this? Where is he? And where are the children?" 

"If I knew that, I'd have my darling back!" Jarnsaxa snapped. "They made off, on a hideous monster your lover summoned to kill us all! I should have known he was as dark and twisted as you!"

He tried now to claw at Thor, but Thor easily held him off, still looking about. Now his mother and Byleistr were landing, on the same half of the longboat he was on. Across choppy waters, Thrym was saying, almost smugly, "As we don't have your supposed hostages, there is nothing you can do, no claim you can bring against us. And even if you could bring a claim, what would it be? That we stole the ignoble whelps of an Aesir as well as the royal bastard, a half-slave runt?"

Helblindi seemed to be puzzling over this, like it was all a bit too much for him.

"You kidnapped a prince," he offered. "A prince who is legitimate now."

Thrym snorted.

"A prince of nothing. A prince of rags. We used to hunt him for sport. Kill me for that runt, and you lose legitimacy with all of Jotunheim."

Byleistr now cleared his throat.

"Actually," he shouted across, with a sly look at Frigga. "He could probably get away with killing you. You were about to trade one of Jotunheim's Ancient Winters to Svartalfheim."

Then, with a nod, he added, "Go ahead and do it, Helblindi."

Helblindi smiled and advanced on Thrym.

-

Thor and Frigga left the others to subduing Thrym and Jarnsaxa's much-diminished band, and took to the skies looking for Loki and the children. 

"Thrud cannot swim!" Thor's mother shouted at him, as wind and fog whipped her golden hair into a storm about her face.

"Can Loki?" Thor offered back.

Magni certainly couldn't. Whatever this 'hideous beast' that had so thoroughly destroyed the ship was, Thor hoped it was keeping them safe and out of the treacherous currents beneath them. 

Then they saw it. It was huge, massive enough that its undulating form stretched clear across to the horizon. Loki and the children were tiny figures on its dark, scaly head. Thrud caught sight of them and began hopping, waving her arms to and fro to catch their attention, like she thought the serpent the size of Yggdrasil would not be enough. 

When Thor swooped down low enough to hear her cries, he discovered that she was saying, "Father! Grandmother! Uncle Loki made Magni a new snake!" 

"I didn't know anything was wrong with his old one," Thor managed, once he landed. His boots skidded a bit on the dismount. The huge serpent was sleek as polished metal. Thor could not bring himself to marvel at this, however, as he was too busy marveling at the sight before him. Thrud was rumpled, but cheery and unharmed, clutching a small knife and hopping about like a mad thing. And Loki—well. He looked terrible, truth be told. Brittle, tired, hair a mess, skin Aesir-bleached for some reason. But seeing him there clutching Magni to his breast filled Thor with shimmering relief.

Frigga landed just behind him. She looked every bit as light and grateful as Thor felt.

"Gundr," Magni said, by way of hello.

"Jormagundr," Loki corrected. 

"Oki," Magni complained. 

"He keeps saying Uncle Loki's name!" Thrud said now, hopping to her father and throwing her arms around him. She tapped her knife against his knee and Thor, without preamble, reached down and plucked it from her hands.

"Hey!" Thrud complained. "Grandmother!"

"No," Frigga said automatically.

"Magni can't be saying Loki's name," Thor put in now, because he had to say something. It was say something or kiss Loki senseless in front of his children, and with the way they had left things, that would perhaps not be wise. Loki had knives, too, and unlike Thrud was very likely to stab Thor. "He's only met Loki a few times."

"Well, sure, but you're always talking about him," Thrud said.

That was true. Thor felt himself break into a stupid smile, quite without meaning to. They were safe. Loki had rescued them. He'd also inexplicably decided to arm Thrud and give Magni a pet that could in no way be permitted to take up residence in New Asgard, but, well. This was _Loki_. He wouldn't be himself if he weren't also somehow unmanageable and contradictory.

Thor's mother came up behind them. She tugged Thrud to her gently and pressed two fingers to the small of Thor's back, pushing him in Loki's direction. Thor went as if shoved, clumsy on the serpent's sleek scales. He took his son gently from Loki's arms.

He meant to congratulate Loki on rescuing himself and the children, but instead what he said was, "You were planning to leave."

Loki's things had been packed. Just his cloak and his boots, and that was telling, wasn't it? How little Loki actually had. Loki might be the firstborn son of the royal line and a genuine Ancient Winter, but in some ways he had not come so far from those days when he'd been dragged to Asgard with nothing more than the clothes on his back.

Now his mouth thinned.

"It's either leave or die," he said, short about it. "And you were right, Thor. I am a coward."

No. No. Oh, perhaps the codes of old Asgard would hold Loki to be a coward. Perhaps Odin might say he was one. But what _right_ did they have, to demand that Loki die for them?

"You are a great, petty, vicious, wicked little trickster, brother," Thor said, deliberately keeping his tone light. "I find it hard to believe that you cannot find a way to sidestep your agreement with the All-Winter."

Loki was quiet, for a moment. There was a shine to his eyes, intent and resigned. 

"That was the plan," he said. "Sidestep it by leaving Jotunheim and never coming back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usually I post an update on Monday, but this week it will probably have to wait until Thursday. Hope this chapter tides people over until then!
> 
> On Thursday: that Thing Loki did to get banished.


	17. Mother, Brother, and Home

Upon their return to the palace, Helblindi declared that the great warriors Sif and Brunnhilde, who had defended the realm from a traitor and who were his dearest friends, besides, were to have a feast in their honor in three days' time.

As an afterthought, Helblindi added, "And it will be in my honor, for defeating Thrym. And in honor of the Asgard-king and my brother Loki, who bring us the winter. Are the winter." 

He shrugged.

"Stuff," he finished, with a nod at Thrud. Then he strode off to wash the blood from his hands. 

Loki decided that it was very likely Thrym was dead. He wasn't entirely sure if Jarnsaxa was, nor did he care. Thrym's lieutenants trailed after Helblindi, prodded along by the palace guards. The head lieutenant was a massive, injured giant who Byleistr seemed to be strong-arming into giving testimony against the entire clan.

Loki would have slipped off in the midst of all of this tumult, except that Thor kept close to him and he could not bring himself to connect the dots for Thor.

He planned to leave. If he left, and Thor made no move to likewise uproot the Asgardians, that meant all of New Asgard would be at the mercy of the All-Winter. These truths buzzed about in Loki's head, swarmed over all of his other thoughts, and tied up his normally slick tongue. 

So he left a double standing next to Thor while the king of New Asgard fondly watched Sif scold Thrud. Then he slipped off. He would get his things and go, demanding no fanfare. And if his feet were heavy as lead, well. That was only the exhaustion.

But the door of his chambers did not close behind him. A slender hand intruded and then Frigga was there, watching him solemnly from the doorway. 

Loki's throat closed up. When he managed to struggle past this, he said, "Would you also beg me to stay, my queen?"

That was the wrong question. He wanted to ask if she hated him. If she had hated him all this time. Odin had told him she'd been the one to demand his banishment, because she'd known all along what he'd done. And Odin was a liar, but that couldn't have been a lie. Lies hadn't seemed to work in Valhalla. 

Now the queen let herself in, smoothing down the wildness of her golden-brown hair. She reached for Loki's hands, but Loki stepped back. He could not let her touch him. If she touched him, then she might be clever enough to do it kindly and then he might not have the courage to leave.

"Loki, we will not trade you to the All-Winter," Frigga said.

Loki didn't know whether to believe it. He wasn't sure it mattered, anyway.

"Someone will," he said. He tried for a smile and was quite sure it came out a grimace. "Byleistr might."

Frigga breathed in, closing her eyes for a moment.

"Then we can help you leave. But not with some clumsy, dangerous traveling spell like this, where you might be careened into some garbage pit in the outer universe—"

If this were Valhalla, Loki would not have his sharpness. Instead he would have nothing but vulnerable little truths he could not seem to turn into weapons. But this was not Valhalla. This was Jotunheim. Here he could wield his words, as long as he kept his head and remembered what the goal was: to be gone within the hour. 

"Help me leave? Like you helped me leave Asgard?"

Frigga's eyes fluttered open. Loki couldn't read her gaze.

"Odin told me," he informed her anyway. He did not, could not hate her, and so he found that he was telling her not simply to push her away but because he owed her the truth. He had owed it to her centuries ago, when he'd been banished. Perhaps if he'd given it to her then, she wouldn't have had to pretend to care for him after. 

"He said he had planned a worse punishment," Loki continued, proud that his voice didn't shake. "I suppose you saved me from that. Thank you, your majesty."

Frigga's hands cast twisting, fidgety shadows on the ice walls, magic-shows where fingers became strange little animals. Loki tried not to think back to how she'd comforted him with real magic shows, when he'd been a child. 

"He would have had Thor take you to a cave," she said haltingly. "Bind you with iron chains. There would have been a serpent there, dripping venom onto you. It would have lasted until Ragnarok."

Terror pierced him like a spike through the brain, but all he said was, "Only three hundred years? Perhaps I could've taken it."

"I didn't want you suffering like that!" Frigga said. Her eyes were wet. "Even though—"

"Even though you must have hated me," Loki said. 

He didn't want her to say it. What he'd done. He should be the one to say it, the one to give new life to that horror. 

"I didn't want you to suffer," Frigga repeated. She wiped at her eyes with the back of a hand, as though long, long ago someone had told her Aesir queens were not supposed to cry, and particularly not when faced with Jotunn runts. 

Loki tried to give her the only comfort he could. 

"You had every right to want my suffering," he said, plain about it. "As you have every right now. I've ruined Thor's life. I brought the Aesir into a mess. And I—"

Here he stammered.

"—I killed the baby," he admitted.

He'd never said it. He'd scribbled it, once, a brief line in a terribly bad story that then took monstrous form, grew wings and made straight for Jotunheim, just because Loki's life was like that. Just as Angrboda had revealed his wickedness, his evil, so too had Loki, long ago.

The child would have been perfect. The embodiment of order and civilization and peace. The true heir to Asgard. Though a young Loki, not knowing about Hela, had traced the secret corners of the Asgardian palace, the hidden wolf-images, and come to the wrong conclusions. It had been difficult not to. Besides, Balder had been heralded by worse than wolves, in the end.

"When he sent me to the Norns to assure the child's birth," Loki forced out now, "they told me that its coming would kill you. That they couldn't bear to have the line of Odin so powerful, and that Odin knew that, so he'd reached an agreement with them. Your light, your life, was to be sacrificed for that of the new child. I couldn't let you die. So I brewed up some mistletoe, made certain it was served in your chalice that night, and I killed the child."

"You killed a mere possibility, not a child," Frigga said, still wiping away the evidence of her pain. "When Odin told me what had happened, told me I'd been with child without even my knowing, I went looking for the babe he claimed you'd murdered, But nothing had died, Loki. Since the child had never lived in any real sense, all that had died was — was a little bit of potential, nothing more. When I went to Hel, I found nothing there. An empty cradle. Valhalla was empty. The green fields of my dead, where I will rule someday, those were empty."

But it had to have hurt. It had to have hurt her, so now Loki was trying to contain his own pain. 

"I still did you wrong," he said. "Great wrong. Don't you see? Angrboda, that monster, that was never Thor, my queen. That was always me. I did you wrong."

Frigga nodded slowly. 

"You did me the same wrong Odin planned to," Frigga said. "It should have been my choice, whether the possibility of that child came into being. Not yours or his."

Loki swallowed hard. As he'd feared, such truths from Frigga were enough to shred the pathetic remains of his heart. 

"I'm sorry," he said. He had never said it to her, and it was six hundred years overdue and not enough, besides. "I'm sorry, my lady, for what I did. That I hurt you, that I left you mourning what could have been—"

Frigga made an incoherent noise. 

"I mourned you!" she cried. " _You_! I was angry for losing that little chance, but how could I mourn it? How could I mourn a son that never was? No, I mourned the son I had well and truly lost, the son of my heart!"

Now she came to him and gathered him in her arms. Loki wanted to push her away, for it wasn't right, this forgiveness. But it was the only constant kindness he hd ever known. Her hand on his hair; her warm, living magic; her patience; her compassion. 

"If you want to go, we will help you," Frigga promised him. "And if you want to stay, we will stand by you. We will not let you be hurt or harmed."

She meant this. She _meant_ it. But Loki did not want her tangled up with him any longer. That had always served her ill.

"Please listen," he told her, a little brokenly. "You and Thor, you have the power to create worlds. You do not need to stay here, neither of you, and not your people either. You can make a Valhalla like Odin's, and you are smarter than he was by half and might be able to bring it into the realm of the living—"

Frigga pulled back in order to look into his eyes. 

"And then where would you go, when you die?" she demanded. "To the bleak violence of Hel? The rigid boredom of Odin's land? My Folkvangr has been crafted for a reason, Loki, and it will stay a dead realm to welcome _my_ dead. No, Jotunheim is our home now."

She still had her arms around him. Loki wanted both to stay like this forever and to beg her to show more common sense. 

"But my queen—"

"Queen!" Frigga said. "Queen! Must you call me that?"

"What should I call you?" Loki said. He felt tangled up with both hope and despair.

Frigga took him in her arms again.

"Mother," she said simply. 

And after that she was good enough not to mention how Loki shook against her, nor how he sobbed into her hair.

-

Later, when he had calmed a bit, he fell asleep with his head in Frigga’s lap, something he hadn’t done in six centuries. 

It still felt natural to do this. And Frigga had helped him conjure a couch and make a pillow of his cloak (“This is the one I gave you?” she asked delightedly, “I thought so. I could not be sure,”) and traced comforting little whorls on his scalp until his jittering nerves calmed and his eyes grew heavy. 

“They may call me away, for there are duties we have all left unattended in New Asgard for too long, but if I go I shall make sure someone stays to guard and help you. You shall not be taken before the All-Winter while you sleep,” the Queen promised. “Now rest. You may decide your own fate, whether to stay or go, when you have slept a bit. The worst decisions are those made in haste and panic.”

Loki wasn’t sure he’d ever made a decision any other way. His fingers found the edge of the queen’s tunic and curled around it, not wanting her to leave. 

She did leave, but she also kept her promise. When he woke later, feeling whole and rested for once, Thor’s Valkyrie stood over him, leaning on the edge of the couch and watching the doorway with an edge of satisfaction. Loki followed her gaze. Sit had a stammering Byleistr by the collar. 

“You told the queen you would let him be at least until she and Thor returned,” Sif was saying dangerously. “Are you going back on your word, Prince Byleistr?”

A more unlikely defender Loki could not have chosen himself. He pulled himself up and looked at Brunnhilde. 

“This is a bit below your pay grade,” he said. 

Brunnhilde shrugged. “It’s a favor for the queen. But yes, it’s actually a lot below our pay grade.”

"It must gall Sif," Loki said.

"To see you drooling while you sleep? She laughed herself silly."

Loki frowned. Thor's unflappable Valkyrie did not, as she was brimming with cheery energy. Loki had to wonder how much she knew about what she was guarding, whether Helblindi's earlier comment about someone being the winter had any meaning to her. 

"What did they tell you?" he said now. "What has you so happy?"

She rolled her eyes. "What, I can't be happy? If you must know, which you mustn't because it's none of your business but I'll tell you anyway, King Helblindi has formally rescinded the parts of the Jotnar-Aesir settlement treaty that call for blanket non-aggression from the Aesir."

"Were you and Sif ever complying with that section of the treaty?" Loki said, as this seemed unlikely.

"Nah, we have a secret Valkyrie band we've been training up," she admitted shamelessly. "But we couldn't tell Thor and Frigga until now, which meant we couldn't enroll Thrud. And, honestly, she really needs the structure formal combat training would offer her."

That she certainly did, so Loki found he could only nod his agreement. He looked across the room to where Sif was still menacing Byleistr.

"Let him in," he said. "I want to speak to him."

He wanted answers, anyway.

Sif, however, did not stop menacing the second prince of Jotunheim. If anything, she only hoisted him up higher, an interesting feat given that Byleistr was more than a head taller than she was.

"You gave my daughter a knife," she told Loki, in icy tones.

Yes, perhaps that hadn't been the responsible thing to do. Still, Loki was not sorry. He liked Thrud, all the unyielding savagery of Sif herself wrapped up in a little Frigga-shaped package. He had decided, at some point, that despite being composed largely of buoyant impulse and clever troublemaking, Thrud was perhaps the perfect child: interesting, determined, and an excellent accomplice. It figured that Thor would have gone and produced a perfect child. 

"I promise you she didn't stab anyone but Jarnsaxa with it," he told Sif now, by way of peace offering.

"That's not the point," Sif said. " _I_ wanted to give my daughter her first knife."

There seemed to be no rejoinder to this. Loki coolly looked away, trying not to think about how this must give Sif a sense of victory. In response, she let go of Byleistr's collar.

"We'll be right outside the door and checking to make sure you haven't gone back on your promise to her majesty," she told Loki's brother. Then she and Brunnhilde strode out, leaving the first two sons of Laufey alone.

Silence stretched between them for a full minute. Loki wanted to ask just why Byleistr hated him, but it seemed a cliche thing to ask. And anyway, the answer was probably fairly simple. Hate wasn't a difficult emotion to achieve, Loki had found. It was also not uncomfortable, and made a very decent guiding principle if you weren't sure what else you could possibly have going for you.

"It must please you to win again," Byleistr said coldly.

Loki tried not to show his confusion. No one had ever told him he was winning. He was quite sure he wasn't winning. At what? How? When? If there was one inescapable truth out there, it was this: Loki didn't win.

"It does please me," he said anyway.

It did delight him, a bit, that someone thought he was winning. Even if that someone was a creature as naturally jealous as Byleistr apparently was. Loki wasn't too put off by the jealousy anyway. For once it made Loki himself seem important, worthy of bitter obsession. Not just the pathetic obsessor.

"You're envious of me because Frigga cares for me and not you," he said, to hammer the point home.

"Envious!" Byleistr said. "Oh yes, call it that, why don't you? What I am is wise. I see you for what you are!"

"Envious people always try to pretend there's a reason to be envious," Loki said pettily, speaking from experience. 

"Do you ever step past your arrogance, your monstrous selfishness, and see a world without you at the very center?" Byleistr snapped. "Loki, the little winter of Jotunheim! Loki, the piece to bring peace with the Aesir! Loki the wanderer, Loki the legend, Loki war-bringer and magic-wielder, Loki the special snowflake of our realm! Even Laufey's death you had to take for yourself, make all about you—"

"You couldn't make yourself carve his head from his shoulders!" Loki said now, sputtering a bit. "You said the sight of blood makes you sick!"

"I could've done it if you'd given me two seconds and half a chance to!" Byleistr said. "And it wasn't my fault! I'd never been the one apprenticed in magic to an Aesir queen and taught barbarism by Odin himself! I wasn't the one all the slaves whispered about, the one with the ice power rolling off him in waves and the domineering, nobly reckless attitude of a king—"

"They say that?" Loki said, feeling flattered.

"You know perfectly well they do!"

"So why even lure me back if you hate me so much?" Loki said.

"Frigga kept asking!" Byleistr said. "She was always asking for you, even though I'm the one who spent three hundred years helping the Aesir settle, while all you've done is finger yourself on foreign planets and daydream about her great lump of a son! I brought you back because I thought I could have done Asgard a good turn, by handing you over to the All-Winter once you'd admitted what you really are. But of course you pretended you weren't a winter at all, just so _you_ could play the savior!"

"I didn't know!" Loki cried. "How was I to know _I'm_ an Ancient Winter?"

"As if it isn't obvious," Byleistr said. 

Something in his tone told Loki there would be no convincing him on this point. Again, silence fell. In the moments that followed, Loki considered this wild alternate world Byleistr had constructed with Loki at the center, a false reality Byleistr seemed to truly believe in.

"You cannot think I've had such a charmed life," he said, after a bit. "Byleistr, they hunted me. Made me a slave to the Aesir. Banished me, and—"

"Are you really demanding that I feel sorry for you?" Byleistr asked scornfully. "Is it not enough that everyone always feels sorry for you? You, you, you. Always and forever at the core of everyone's thoughts, and the rest of us in your shadow!"

Loki breathed out to keep from screaming at him. That the world Byleistr had dreamed up hardly matched the experience of being Loki would likely not matter to Byleistr. Had it ever mattered to Loki, that someone like golden Thor had his own troubles? If that sort of thing had never mattered to Loki, it was probably too much to ask that Byleistr, bitter little clerk that he was, put himself in Loki's shoes.

"I was always jealous of you for how protected you were," Loki told him instead, choosing his words carefully. "How Laufey could not hurt you, as he did me."

Sometimes it helped, to be told that _you_ lived the unapproachable dream. That _you_ were the lucky one. Though Loki could not tell if it helped Byleistr now. While he seemed shocked for an instant, it was merely an instant. Then he was bitterly blank again. 

Then Helblindi shoved open the door, ruining any chance of further conversation. 

"The All-Winter have ended their recess," he mumbled. "They call for a new hearing in two hours, and they might say to kill the Aesir. What are we doing? Do I have to do what they say? I'm very tired, you know, and I don't want to hurt my friends. And I need someone to make sure all those dead slaves are cleared out of my stables. I cannot have dead slaves in my stables. And I think we shall have to give boons to their families. We always have to look after the families. It's a mess, with the families."

"Yes, a thankless mess, but I'll handle it," Byleistr snarled. "I always do."

"I will manage the All-Winter," Loki offered.

"Are you staying?" asked Helblindi, looking surprised. "Really? You never stay long enough to fix any real problems."

Byleistr cracked a little smile at this. Loki realized it was not untrue. 

Perhaps there was more at work here than mere envy and love of Frigga. 

"I'll stay and help now," Loki stammered. "I swear it."

Byleistr made a disdainful noise, but Loki meant it. He meant his words this time. 

-

This, of course, doubled his reasons for staying. He had to stay for New Asgard, as neither Thor nor Frigga seemed inclined to evacuate, and he had to stay to do his part — _a_ part — for Jotunheim. 

Still, staying seemed like suicide. Though he only had two hours, he took his time preparing himself, conjuring finer clothes and attempting to make peace with the snarled mess of his hair. If he died, he didn't want to be gangly and unattractive about it. He was a mage and a piece of the very winter, a legitimate prince of the realm and a son of Queen Frigga. He was, as Thor had said, a great, petty, vicious, wicked little trickster. The least he could do was approach his doom with a certain style. 

Aside from this, he didn't have a plan. He almost never had a plan. He'd saved himself and the children from Jarnsaxa and Thrym, but that had been a fluke, really, and also by now he was out of dental floss. So he wasn't feeling terribly hopeful by the time he made it to the base of the Snaer.

There he heard the muffled thump of mole-bear hooves on snow. He turned. It was Thor, bright and hale and determined-looking. If a few hours' rest made Loki presentable, Thor they made resplendent. He pulled up his mole-bear beside Loki and looked down at him. A wave of chill emanated from his saddlebags, and Loki knew that he carried the two winters they'd retrieved from the lands of the dead.

"What are you doing?" Thor asked Loki roughly. "Not delivering yourself to the All-Winter?"

"Don't worry. I'm also pondering ways to escape my fate."

Or at least that was what Loki would be doing, if his mind wasn't so occupied with admiring Thor.

"I thought that over," Thor said. "I have a plan."

"Is it to give the All-Winter enough power to devour me easily?" Loki said, tapping Thor's saddlebags with a finger.

Thor's face darkened.

"Do you think that? That I would do that?"

He didn't let Loki answer, but instead kept talking, winding his reins around one fist like he needed something to distract him from the dour possibility Loki had just proposed.

"The All-Winter can't be allowed to give the order to attack my people. I can't have that. But I won't let them have you, either, and I would have you trust me in this, Loki."

He snuck Loki a glance, a glance far too hesitant for someone with his magnificent form and good looks.

"Once I was not good to you, brother, and I'm sorry for it. I swear to you that I'm not the monster you clearly think I am—"

"I don't!" Loki protested. "Is this about that stupid book? You're nothing like Angrboda—"

"Good," Thor said. "Let me prove that, then."

"You don't need to," Loki insisted, but Thor was already unwinding those reins and extending his hand.

"Get on," he said, as though a day ago he hadn't been ready to strike Loki utterly from his life. Briefly, Loki wondered just what had made Thor make peace with _The Wicked Brother_. Was it some delusion he had, this notion that he might be anything like the terrible creature Loki had invented? Loki wanted to explain to him that no, that Angrboda was simply a way of coping. Angrboda performed all the most unbearable bits of _Loki_ , all of Loki's greed and grief and malice and rage.

But now Thor was hauling him onto the mole-bear, with little care for how Loki squawked in indignation.

"Trust me," he said again, rather more roughly this time. "I will not let them hurt you, Loki."

Then he spurred the mole-bear into a brutal pace, and it was all Loki could do to hold onto him. 

"I still think you and the rest of Asgard should just leave!" Loki shouted, against his back.

"Our home? I think not," Thor shouted back, and that, too, Loki couldn't make sense of. How the Aesir seemed to care for Jotunheim, how they counted it theirs. This was Thor's doing, or perhaps Frigga's. Loki had handed them a trick and they'd transformed it into a gift beyond measure. 

Before long, they saw the great peaks of the temple through the trees. Now Thor slowed the mole-bear and reached into the saddlebags, handing the winters back to Loki. Loki felt their punishing cold pricking deliciously against his hands, their ice singing to his.

"Hide them," Thor ordered.

"Even if I stuff them into some other dimension, the All-Winter may still know I have them," Loki said. "It is said that the Ancient Winters call to all of us."

But he tucked both winters away nevertheless, just in time for them to arrive at the temple. There was a greater crowd than there had been before, for it seemed the news of Loki's offer to restore the winters had traveled all across the realm and brought nearly every giant of birth and breeding to see the spectacle. The giants milling about outside parted for them, and inside, too, they made room for Thor and Loki to stride towards the three savage judges, already awake and with their eyes rolling horribly in their heads.

"I smell them!" said Drifa.

"I sense them!" said Fannlaug.

Groke stretched his grey lips over his grey gums. " _Our winters_."

Two clerks came forward now, to help Thor back into the cage. Loki discovered that he had Thor by the arm — when had this happened? He didn't even remember grabbing Thor. No matter. He knew he did not want to let him go.

"Peace," Thor told him. "All will be well."

He detached Loki's fingers from his broad bicep. He climbed into the cage like he was pleased to be there, crossing his arms and leaning against the bars. Loki gawked at him, and he wasn't the only one. The judges' chamber was packed tight, giants struggling to fit into their balconies, and more than one pointed now at the bizarrely nonchalant king of New Asgard. Helblindi had indeed come to watch, this time flanked by Frigga instead of Byleistr, and Loki saw the king whisper something to Thor's mother, a puzzled look on his face.

Loki, for his part, kept as far back as he could from the three great heads in the center of the floor. When Drifa's long tongue reached out for him, he scrambled to get farther back than that.

"Little winter," chuckled Groke. "Little winter, come here. You have brought us our magic. _All_ of our magic. As we knew you would someday. Come, my little winter. It is time."

"Time for what?" Loki managed. 

A devouring? A melting? Unclear. But the way Groke smiled at him now did not bode well.

"It will not hurt much," crooned the great judge. "Only a very little hurt, for my little winter. And you are used to pain, and will bear it well."

Confused murmurs erupted in the balconies. It seemed not everyone on Jotunheim knew what Loki was. Good. Loki preferred it that way. He hated being the last to find out about things. As he edged further back, pressing now into the crowd that banked the temple doorway, he considered his next move.

"I think we're getting ahead of ourselves," Thor said.

The All-Winter exploded with shrieks.

"Quiet!"

"He speaks again!"

"You are not to speak!"

"Oh, but I _do_ speak," Thor said, holding up a warning finger. Although Drifa's tongue smacked the cage and set him swinging, he kept hold of the bars with his other hand hand and kept that finger pointing, waggled it at the All-Winter like they were naughty children.

"You're looking very pleased, the three of you, for giants who have no magic," Thor said. "For giants who haven't yet told us what you'll give us for putting the winters back where they belong."

"Your life!" Fannlaug shrieked.

"Your people!" hissed Drifa.

"You cannot bargain with us, little Asgard-King," said Groke dismissively. "You see the great throng of our children? They will tear you limb from limb when we give the word."

Thor smiled. He put a hand on his hip now, casually akimbo, still keeping the other hand locked on the cage bars to steady him.

"Kill me, you mean?"

"Obviously!" snapped Groke.

"So it's me or Loki, you mean? One of us has to die today?" 

"You or my winter," Groke hissed. "That is the bargain. One of you forfeits your life to us."

Thor seemed to ponder this. 

"Right. That's what I thought. So either way, we lose. We get nothing. You know what? No. That's not going to work."

And he straightened, turned, and gestured wildly at Loki, who until now had been quite content to fade into the throng.

"Loki! Loki, did you hear?" Thor said, like it was possible to avoid the horrible booming voices of the All-Winter. "Let's just be going. They have nothing they're offering!"

"We offer you your life!" Groke roared now. And Drifa and Fannlaug, too, began roaring and tantruming.

"Fool!"

"You reject our mercy!"

"I am going to need you to drive a better bargain!" Thor roared back. The waggling finger made a return now, pointing at each of the All-Winter in turn. "I want my life, the lives of my people, our treaty with your people respected—"

"That is what we offered! Now we shall offer less!"

"Fool!"

"Fool!"

" _I'm not done_ ," Thor snapped, heedless of how the crowd around him had begun to murmur among themselves, confused as they were by the show he was putting on. "I want custody of my son. I want a fair share of the iron reserves. I want slavery on Jotunheim gone—barbaric practice, really—"

Here Loki had to step forward, for Thor was plainly going a bit mad.

"These terms are subject to some negotiation!" Loki offered.

"No, they're not," Thor said. "These are the terms. And I'm not done yet. I want one of the winters for my own."

Now the crowd erupted, and so did the All-Winter, and so did Loki.

"What?" he cried. 

Oh. 

_What?_

But by now the All-Winter was quite through with Thor. Drifa's horrible tongue curled itself around his cage and drew him in, as Groke, gone white with rage, said, "We will eat you right now, Asgard-filth! And take our winters back when you are gone!"

In response, Thor only shrugged.

"Fine," he said. "Kill me. Send me to Valhalla. Oh, but you should know one thing. You see Loki —" he twisted around and found Loki again, pointing down at him in case anyone assumed some other Loki could possibly be involved, "—he tore a crack between that realm and the realms of the living. This is important because, if you send me to Valhalla, my father shall immediately try to put me on the throne of that land."

Thor's tone softened, became extremely reasonable.

"And if I replace my father as Valhalla's king, then Valhalla will no longer have a hold on him. Thus, Odin One-Eye will return to the lands of the living."

Frenzy descended on the temple. Giants from the highest to the lowest balconies were shouting, clerks were trying to hold a surging crowd back. The All-Winter began to wail with crazed fury. It all built to a cacophony that seemed to say much the same thing, for giants reacted the same way anyone might, when they heard news they did not like.

"Liar!"

"You lie!"

"Wicked thing! It is a lie!"

Loki ran now to where the cage hung, for all that it put him closer to the All-Winter, for now he truly feared for Thor. Now the All-Winter would not have to give an order for the giants to kill Thor. The giants would do so gladly, as Thor was threatening them with a monster far more real and terrible than Angrboda.

But Thor continued to look completely unruffled. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little acid-green creature, a rabbit that became a kitten. It yawned. 

"If you don't believe me," he called out, over the shouts of the crowd, "then here's the proof! Raw magic from the base of the world tree, the very place Loki and I landed after he tore through my father's new realm. That is where my father will land first, once you have killed me. But soon he will come to Jotunheim. I believe he said something about taking more of your winter? To make this realm a place for the Aesir alone?"

Now not simply the clerks, but also Helblindi's guard were holding the crowd back. Loki stared up at Thor with no small amount of dismay. _This_ was not much of a plan. This was likely to make Thor even more hated on Jotunheim than he already was. And, in any case, it wasn't as if much of the crowd believed him. Whole balconies still chanted "liar!" at the king of Asgard, and now the All-Winter joined in.

"Deceiver! Trickster!"

"This cannot be!"

"Odin is gone! Jotunheim must never be his!" 

Thor twisted around in his cage, which Drifa had loosed and which was now swinging wildly again, and found Loki. His gaze was expectant. A little impatient, too, like he'd thought Loki would catch on by now.

Oh. Of course. Loki was not simply a spectator. Loki was never a spectator, particularly not here on Jotunheim. Here he was a prince, a legend, a war-bringer and magic-user. 

He straightened up. Held his hands out as he addressed both the All-Winter and the crowd.

"Thor speaks the truth!" he shouted. "It's not him or me, you see. It's him or _Odin_!"

A hush fell. Loki gazed with satisfaction upon a sea of aghast blue faces, anxious red eyes. 

"Thor does not lie," Loki repeated, into the shocked silence. "I, who am the voice of the royal house and give testimony for the line of Laufey, do swear it. It would be best for you to comply with his terms, for his death would bring a terrible fate to Jotunheim, to all the nine realms!"

But now one bold soul shouted down from a mid-level balcony.

"But he would take one of the winters!"

Right. There was that.

"That is, as I said, open to negotiation," Loki said smoothly. "I'm sure we don't have to give him that."

Yes, he thrilled at the thought. But really. It was ludicrous, the notion of Thor asking for him like this. Thor now looked mulish, apparently stupidly enamored of the idea, but Loki didn't need to be won. He didn't need Thor to stake a claim on him, didn't need Thor to bargain for his life. Loki had never asked for this show, this trick Thor was attempting to play on all of Jotunheim in order to make Loki completely, utterly his. 

Even if it did make Loki feel, well, breathless. Fluttery, almost. Light. A lightness Loki had never felt before.

"Say we give him everything else, and just let the winter do its own thing," Loki proposed.

Thor snorted.

"What thing? Let it wander the realms starting wars it has no business starting?"

The fluttery lightness evaporated a bit. Loki didn't know how Thor had found out about that, but he didn't think this was the right time to bring it up.

"Please!" he said, stamping his foot and looking up at Thor. "We can discuss that later! For now, the winter only seeks to be free!"

"Free from what?" Thor said back, with a roll of his eyes. "What does it owe any allegiances to, at present?"

Groke looked about ready to wail something, so here both Thor and Loki said, "Give us a moment!" rather loudly. 

The great judge subsided, looking confused. 

"Maybe it's just used to doing what it likes," Loki told Thor, crossing his arms in his frustration. "You can't just demand that the winter be yours! It is an agent of chaos, of evil, a creature with no home or real purpose—"

"What is this business of it having no home?" Thor said. "It could settle down very comfortably here on Jotunheim if it let itself!"

"It won't!" Loki said. Now some very stupid tears were coming to his eyes, and he had not the slightest idea why. "It is far too wicked a thing to settle down! It would bring you nothing good, in any case! That's why it needs freedom!"

"What it needs is a good firm hand to use it well and pleasurably," Thor growled. The growl made something in Loki's core jump, a lush little jolt that went straight to his cunt. Since he was at the center of a great chamber packed full of frost giants, this was not the ideal time to wake that particular body part.

"It does not," Loki protested faintly, sure he was purple with embarrassment.

"Oh, I think it would beg for that hand," Thor said. "On hands and knees in the dirt at the base of the world tree, that firm, round backside pointed my way, and further down that sweet purple—"

At this point several giants began murmuring again, and Loki realized that, really, this must be quite confusing for nearly everybody else.

"It's me!" he snapped. "I'm the winter! It's me!"

Groke saw an opening.

"You are my winter! Mine!"

"No," Loki said, annoyed. "I am _my_ winter."

Not theirs. Not Laufey's. Not Odin's. Not a tool for anyone, ever, not a slave robbed of choice. Loki belonged to Loki, went where Loki pleased, did as Loki liked.

And, now that Thor had made his proposal, Loki found that he liked it. A quiet, wondering part of him wanted what Thor was offering, ridiculous though it might be.

"It doesn't matter if you don't believe him," Loki told the All-Winter now, a little ruthlessly. "Believe _me_ , for I am your winter and I am stronger now than ever before, strong as the Casket once was. If you harm a hair on Thor's head, if you turn against the Aesir and bring Odin Allfather roaring out of Valhalla, then all the first magic of Ymir shall be held against _you_."

Three huge mouths dropped open. Just before the wailing began anew, Loki told Thor, as privately as he could in a temple packed with nearly every wellborn giant on Jotunheim, "And alright. I'll be yours, I suppose."

Through the commotion, he saw Thor grin, boyish and handsome. That grin made everything else seem decidedly irrelevant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frigga and Freyja are the exact same person in this universe because I am about as faithful to Norse mythology as the Marvel Cinematic Universe is. 
> 
> Next chapter: all of Loki's fantasies come true.


	18. Loved

In the end the All-Winter had no choice but to comply with Thor's demands. This shocked Loki less than the relieved cheers from the crowd did.

Jotunheim did not want Odin to return, and the frost giants seemed to view Loki’s threats towards the three ancient judges as Loki heroically attempting to prevent that possibility. This was precisely what Loki wanted them to think, but he didn’t expect it to be nearly as successful as it was. As he and Thor exited the temple, giants fought their way to him, seeking to touch the edge of his cloak, his arm. They whispered of how the first prince was a true winter prince, how he had just traded himself to the cunning Asgard-king for their safety.

"Is that what just happened?" Loki said, low to Thor.

"Now you’re Angrboda's plaything," Thor said, grinning. 

"They think I'm a hero!" 

"They think you're a noble sacrifice," Thor corrected, his arm tight around Loki and his beard tickling Loki’s ear. "But I know you're a hero."

They had to fight their way to their mole-bear, as the crowd of curious and shocked admirers would not let them through. Loki considered making doubles of them and then vanishing their real selves from sight, but then they reached their steed and he discovered that Frigga had quite beaten them to that. She and Helblindi now shimmered into view. 

“Well done,” she said, pulling them both into a warm hug. When she pulled back, she tapped Thor fondly on the chest. 

“My clever son.”

Then a fond tap for Loki. 

“And my brave one.”

Loki felt as though, with that single tap, she’d cracked open his insides and poured warm light into every fissure. He swallowed hard. 

Helblindi stood off to the side, a look of utter bewilderment in his face. 

“Did you just free my slaves?” he asked Thor. 

Thor looked momentarily caught out, before rallying and taking on his customary bravado. 

“Think of it this way. I freed many more of Jarnsaxa’s. And that doesn’t mean they won’t work for you if they like. You’ll just have to give them something for it now.”

“But what if they don’t want to work for me?” Helblindi said uncertainly. 

“I expect they will,” Loki said. “Where could they go but the palace?”

Thor had a ready answer for this. 

“There’s plenty of land by New Asgard. Perhaps we could reopen the settlement treaty once more and see about giving the smaller giants proper homes of their own.”

“How does that help New Asgard?” Loki said.

Thor shrugged. 

“Maybe it doesn’t. But I wish I had helped them sooner, helped everyone I could sooner.”

And he wound his arms around Loki from behind, possessive now, as if to say that by _everyone_ he meant someone in particular. 

Helblindi was still unconvinced. 

“How will I play Finfinfin?”

Frigga stared at him in horror. 

“Is that that dreadful game, where—“

“Yes,” Thor said, without preamble. “And the truth is that you won’t play it, your majesty. Not anymore. Not if I can stop it. But there are far better games I can teach you. In the halls of Valhalla, they play a game reserved for the most glorious heroes, a game one so large as you may well excel at. A sort of relay game with ale and fine chalices, where they quaff the ale most mightily, and then seeking to flip the chalices.”

“Flip cup. I’ve played it,” Loki put in. 

Helblindi looked intrigued. 

“You have seen the customs of Valhalla?” he said. “You have seen the customs of Valhalla. You will help me make my court as grand as Odin’s hall.”

“Of course we will,” Loki told him smoothly. “You’re really going to love the hip hop reggaeton dance classes.”

-

After a brief stop at the palace to collect Loki’s cloak and boots, they went down to the Lands Below. 

Thor had promised to put the Ancient Winters, save one, back where they belonged. That meant journeying again to the core of the realm. But before they went that far they discovered Thor’s kingdom in the throes of a celebration, for apparently Sten the barrelmaker had sped ahead of New Asgard’s king in order to spread the word of Thor’s win against the All-Winter. 

In Thor’s hall, plump-cheeked Aesir maidens were busy hauling out long metal tables and casks of ale. Weatherbeaten Aesir men were laying out platters of spiced rabbit. Thrud danced in and out of their way, shouting orders that some of the Aesir actually appeared to be following, at least until her mothers showed up. 

Brunnhilde and Sif carried a serpent the size of a divan between them, one of the sort commonly found in the mushroom forests. It was clearly a fresh kill. 

“I know we’re due at the palace for Helblindi’s feast in a day or so,” Brunnhilde said. “But it’ll be seventeen fish courses and a lot of shaved ice, if I know the giants. And that Byleistr is such a teetotaler than I’m convinced he makes them water the fish-wine.”

“What she means,” Sif put in, “is that your people want to celebrate in their own way, Thor. We’ve avoided war and you’re alive, so.”

“Drinks!” Brunnhilde said. 

A cheer broke out over the hall. The Aesir clustered around Thor, a new crowd with a new aim, that aim being hearty congratulations. Loki was now no longer the center of attention, so that had been short-lived. But he did catch whispers here and there about the king’s proposal and the rather sordid details that had come out in the law court, though nearly every time he turned to stare those whispers down, he was greeted by innocent Aesir faces. 

“That’s right, right at the base of of the world tree,” he heard someone say briskly. “Captured the king’s heart years ago, and then he goes and does that. Well, how is his majesty supposed to resist? He’s just a man, after all, and a pretty Jotunn quim on display would make any man give his right arm, even if it wasn’t on his childhood love. At least this one’s no Jarnsaxa.”

This time Loki whirled around in time. A portly Aesir beamed at him without a trace of shame. Horribly, Thrud hopped about right behind the man, plainly eavesdropping. Loki decided that he probably could not prevent New Asgard from thinking him a slattern, but letting the children hear about it was a bridge too far. He stalked toward the miscreant who was spreading Loki's secrets to all, considering perhaps turning him into a frog, but found Sif and Brunnhilde blocking the way.

"Leave Sten alone and come help set the table," Brunnhilde said, without preamble.

"That is Sten?" Loki demanded. "The clever Sten? And why should I help?"

"Prince Loki, this is New Asgard," Sif said crisply. "We all set the table, as per our oldest and most revered customs. The least you could do is respect those customs."

Loki gaped at her.

Those were his words. She was using _his_ words against him.

Sif grinned.

"Besides, I'm going to have to suffer you co-parenting my child and happily cohabiting with my ex-husband. The least you could do is help set the table."

He helped set the table. Not because he wanted to offer her any more wins, but because slow, shocked horror was winding through him. Co-parenting. Co-habiting. _Co-parenting and co-habiting._

He wondered where he could go to explain that this was wrong. This could not work. He would be atrocious at it. Actually, he would set a million tables — Loki had been debased so many times that servants' work would be no hurdle, he could overcome his distaste for it — if only he could locate the complaint department for this sort of thing, just to let them know that they had selected entirely the wrong frost giant to share the golden corners of Thor's domestic life.

It didn't help that every time he set a spoon down, Thrud was there to pick it up and clang it and give him a gap toothed smile. That when he started overseeing the de-scaling of the serpent, Frigga was there, bouncing baby Magni on her lap as she likewise helped with the work.

"I would embrace you again if I didn't have snake guts on this hand," she said, with a smile, just as Magni began to cry at the sight of Loki.

On instinct, Loki bleached himself. He heard several of the Aesir gasp.

"You are a great magic-user," said one ruddy-haired young man who was busy carting tankards to the tables. "Praise be the Norns. We have not had anyone besides the queen to train us in how to use magic for years."

"But does it not bother you?" asked a lithe, dark-skinned maiden who was helping with the serpent-skinning. "You're still attractive in this form, Prince Loki, but you were radiant before."

Loki blinked at her. He was quite sure no one, ever, had ever called him 'radiant' until now. As far as he could tell, he was most decidedly not radiant. 

"It's for the babe," he said. "Magni mistakes me for his mother, so my looks upset him—"

"Teach him that one as blue as you can be kinder than his mother," Frigga advised. "Here, come and take him. Hold him a bit in your real form, pay him mind, _delight_ in him, and you will see him calm."

Loki did this. And, after twenty minutes or so of Magni screaming, Frigga proved to be right. The child calmed. Mostly. As he was Jarnsaxa's child, he still managed to dredge up a complaint.

"Gundr!" he declared.

"We had to leave him in the ocean! He's too large!" Loki said.

" _Gundr_."

"I was fine with bringing him," Loki said. "It's your father, he's the one you should take this up with."

"Father's annoying like that," Thrud observed now. She was gathering bloody snake scales and stuffing them in her apron pockets for some infernal reason Loki decided he needed to know nothing about. 

He also decided that what was good for scared little Magni was not good for fearless little Thrud.

"Thrud Thorsdottir, you will respect your father," he said. "He's a very bold and heroic man, a good man—"

Frigga smiled at this, but Thrud only rolled her eyes.

"Yuck," she said. "Sten was right. You do love father."

"I certainly hope so," Thor said now, coming upon them, pulling a knife from his pocket, and sitting cross-legged on the floor, the better to get at a yet-unskinned section of serpent. 

"Hey!" Thrud said. "That is my knife!"

"No," Thor said reasonably. "This is _my_ knife. I stole it, and now it's mine."

"You never steal,” Thrud said, making this sound like a character flaw. She decided to pluck Magni from Loki, shove her brother at her grandmother, and climb into Loki's lap herself, despite completely failing to check in with Loki about this course of action. Loki sputtered. He decided that this, perhaps, was the moment to make clear that he should not be expected to cohabit or coparent, that while he wanted _Thor_ , had always wanted him, Loki was decidedly not the sort of thing Thor should be bringing home and keeping with the family.

Thor spoke before he could. 

"I steal all the time," he said, with a shameless look at Loki. "Didn't you hear? I stole the most magnificent winter on all Jotunheim."

Loki could feel his face purpling, as all the Aesir around them _oohed_ and laughed to see their king so flirtatious. 

"Ugh," Thrud said, throwing back her head. "You're so sentimental!"

"Ugh," Loki echoed. But he could feel his heart stuttering in his chest, frail and alive, and his arms closed around Thrud.

He had said already that he would be Thor's. This was what came with Thor, all this merry community, this shared work, these bouncing babes on his knees. If he wanted to be Thor's, kept by Thor, to make a home with Thor, then he would have to make what was Thor's his as well.

_I cannot be so terrible at it as Jarnsaxa was,_ Loki decided. And, for once feeling gratified by the existence of Jarnsaxa, he pressed an impetuous kiss to Thrud's golden head.

-

The feast began with a rowdy clatter of spoons and plates and many calls for Thor to give a speech. Loki thought it should begin with a speech. On old Asgard, Odin had never skimped on the grand speeches. No one had dared touch their food until he finished his grand speeches, so meals had been heralded by complete and reverent silence. And the royal family had been afforded a golden dais for this purpose, always eating apart, glorious mosaics of Thor and Odin and Frigga behind them. 

Here everyone sat at the same rough tables, and while Thor was more or less in the center of the hall, as befitting a king, there was no dais. And Thor didn’t seem inclined to say anything grand. Just that Prince Magni would be making his home in New Asgard, which was met with cheers, and that Prince Magni's mother was on house arrest and would likely not be visiting, which was met with even more cheers. That Asgard had been granted the right to re-found the Valkyries (more cheers) and the right to the iron reserves (more cheers) and that they might have newcomers soon, owing to the new realm-wide ban on slavery. 

The cheering for this last bit rather surprised Loki, and so did the fact that it was punctuated by furtive glances and wolf-whistles, not to mention quite a few whispers about the glories of pretty Jotunn quims. Loki tried to glare judgementally at the pair of Aesir maidens across the table who were responsible for this last comment, but the blonde one one in particular refused to be judged. 

She reached across and patted Loki’s hand. 

“Dear Prince Loki,” she whispered, as Thor went on to remind the Aesir that they, too, had been refugees not so long ago and so a spirit of welcome was expected of them now. “An innocent such as you can never comprehend the delight your kind brings us. But I shall lend you my copy of _The Wicked Brother_ , which describes it most perfectly.”

“It’s not an instruction manual!” Loki said. 

In his bafflement and embarrassment, he nearly missed Thor’s final proclamation. 

“Finally, the last piece of good news. We shall be able to restore two of the Ancient Winters to Ymir, although the third winter sits now among us. This is the winter I have been granted the right to court.”

And before Loki could really process this, people began calling for _him_ to give a speech.

So Loki stood rather shakily, wondering what in the realms was actually happening to him, and launched into a speech. It was a very good speech. It was easily far better than Thor’s. It contained metaphors that made every Aesir matron cry, numerous references to noble sacrifice, promises of Aesir-Jotnar unity, celebration of the grandeur of New Asgard’s fields and farms, blessings upon every household. The Aesir cheered. Although by now Loki knew Thor’s people were inclined to cheer just about anything, it did seem that they liked his speech. 

Then Thor grabbed Loki and kissed him senseless, and the cheers became an outright roar. 

-

After the feast, Thor promised a tour of the royal apartments, which Loki had never seen before. He also asked Loki for the two remaining winters.

"Sten and a few of the others will bring them to Ymir, not you. I do not want Ymir to devour you any more than I wanted the All-Winter to," he said. He put a hand on Loki's arm, pulling him in, the action rough and protective. "Besides, they will best determine _how_ to restore the winters, how to parcel out this strange power and monitor Ymir as they do it, in case he wakes up wrong."

"Wrong?" Loki said. "I thought you loved Ymir."

Thor’s brow furrowed. 

“I pity the creature. And at times I’ve longed to know him better, to hear his thoughts and understand why he must suffer so. To learn what landed him in such a predicament. To help, and to explain to him how he inadvertently harms everyone else, in the hopes that he might stop. I suppose I have affection for him. Really—“

He stopped. Looked pensive, then chagrined. 

“When we first discovered him, he struck me a bit like you. When you first came to us. As I’d been too callous to help you, I resolved to help him. So that I might be better than my former self.”

“I’m sorry,” Loki said. “Are you comparing me to a primitive beast born of the very first specks of nothing, whose claim to fame is that he invented mindless procreation and whose chief pastime is suffering stupidly for the ill-thought-out consequences of his actions?”

Actually, it wasn't a bad comparison. Drat. And it wasn’t even all that offensive, learning that in all the three hundred years he’d been obsessing over Thor, Thor had, in his own way, been thinking too of Loki. As Thor began to answer, Loki shushed him with a hand. He pulled the winters out and handed them to Thor. Thor, in turn, called for Sten and his band. 

But then something occurred to Loki. Something that stabbed uncomfortably at the day's happiness. He worried his hands, reopening some of the little cuts he'd given himself earlier and hardly even caring.

"Do you think two-thirds of his winter will be enough?" he asked Thor, low, so Sten and the others wouldn't hear. "Enough to stop his burning? He will still be missing one."

"The final winter is not his," Thor growled. "It is as you said. It is yours. You are yours, and have said you will be mine, and I will hear no more of it. Not even from Ymir. If this isn't the way to save Jotunheim, then we will find another way, a way that doesn't risk you."

The harsh finality in his tone made Loki's mouth water. Something in Loki curled up tight, anxiously waiting, wanting more.

When Sten and the others had been dispatched on their mission, Thor took Loki by the shoulder and pulled him to a door in the side of the hall. Behind it lay a curving staircase. Thor pulled him up it impatiently. Loki followed, that delicious tenseness making him eager to see Thor continue with this strange streak of dominance.

But there was no trace of that when Thor opened the door to the royal apartments. He was all open, honest welcome as he showed Loki to the spacious room for the children, where Thrud was already pretending to be rescuing her brother from a parade of toy kidnappers. The damask-draped, circular room, full of light, which was Frigga's. Sit and Brunnhilde's chamber door. A sitting room. A smaller, plainly more well-loved sitting room. A bathing chamber, only one, which Loki found rather preposterous for so many people.

Then Thor's room. 

Privately, Loki felt it wasn't magnificent enough for Thor. It was too small, everything too rough-hewn. It needed a good once-over from a servant, since Thor appeared to be the type throw his dirty underlinens haphazardly in one corner. And Thor decorated not with proper Asgardian gold mosaics, but with Thrud's scribbles tacked to the door of the wardrobe. Thrud fighting dragons, Thrud fighting mole-bears, Thrud with her fists raised at a Snorli while a stick figure Thor cowered, his speech-bubble declaring, "I was so stewpid not too give Thrud her onn nife." Loki made a note that someone needed to work on the child's spelling.

Thor picked up a dirty shirt and tossed it over the scribbles.

"Perhaps not the time to think of Thrud," he said distractedly. He looked at his bed — the one thing that passed muster for Loki, as it was more than large enough for the both of them — then at Loki. Then he cleared his throat, but seemed unable to come up with anything to say. For Thor, who had been so confident kissing Loki and fumbling with him from here to Yggdrasil, this was strange.

"You should lock the door," Loki suggested. 

"Yes," Thor echoed, and hurried to do so. This gave Loki a second to begin peeling off the fine clothes he had conjured earlier in the day. When he looked up, Thor was openly staring at him.

Loki could not understand how _he_ was the focus of so intent a gaze. But, oh, he intended to savor it. He stepped back and undid his leather tunic, looking at Thor from below his lashes. He wanted to make that handsome face go slack with desire, see Thor's need for him written all over Thor. He could do it. Loki was practiced at this sort of thing — no beautiful untouched innocent, no, but good at conjuring whatever he might need to drive his lovers to distraction. He could call up clamps for his nipples, sharp biting things to help him play with those little nubs, working himself to a fever pitch while Thor watched. Or a plug for his backside, let Thor see him pressing it in between the globes of his rear, not just for pleasure but as necessary preparation, given what Thor was packing. Or perhaps just a simple ribbon. Loki knew how to lace it over his hips, along his thighs, so that it framed his bare, glistening mound, left it a plump little present.

"Loki," Thor said. His voice was rough, despite the fact that Loki had enacted none of his plans yet. "How would you have it? That book you wrote, would you have me be like that? Domineering as Angrboda—"

Oh, trust that stupid book to ruin the moment. Loki paused in lifting off his undershirt, which made the whole action seem silly instead of seductive. Sighing, he vanished the undershirt away.

"Angrboda is me, not you," he said plainly. "I thought you'd have figured that out by now."

"My mother told me as much, given the circumstances surrounding your banishment from Asgard," Thor said, imbuing this with a significance that made Loki's heart twinge a bit. That, too, was no longer a secret? Loki would have to get used to having no secrets, though for hundreds of years he'd had little else.

Then Thor continued. "He has an eyepatch, though."

"So did Odin! I associate eyepatches with villainy!"

This only made Thor look faintly hurt, damn him.

"Did," Loki bit out. "I did. I do no longer."

This was true. Getting to know this Thor had upended so much he had relied on: his obsessive worship of old Asgard, his superior hatred of everywhere else, even his feelings on eyepatches. Old Asgard survived in the realms of the dead, but no form it took contained Thor, so who even cared about it? Not Loki. And any other place in the realms, even this rustic kingdom lodged inside a backwater planet, might well be wondrous, should Thor decide to make it his. 

Loki stepped close to him and took Thor's face in his hands. Because he could do this, now. He could just reach for Thor and hold him. It was marvelous.

"Angrboda has nothing of you save your outward form," he told Thor truthfully. "And the _only_ thing you should take from that book is that I have wanted to lay with you for hundreds of years."

Thor made a lovely, guttural sound at that. His broad hands closed about Loki's bare waist, their warm touch stoking Loki's need again.

"You didn't answer my question," Thor said.

"With all I've done, do you think I'll be scared if you dominate me a bit?" Loki said, to avoid telling Thor how very much he wanted that from him. "I told you. You're not my first."

Although. Well. Loki had a strange run on honesty this week, and it had netted him so much. Perhaps he shouldn't jinx that.

"You were my first kiss," he admitted. "I suppose I never wanted that from anyone else. Or no one else wanted that with _me_ , I don't know—"

Thor made a noise halfway between indignant rage and naked want, another noise Loki discovered he adored. He pulled Loki in tight and said, "Foolish, gorgeous brother. I wish you'd asked for that kiss years ago."

"Gorgeous? You said I have a sharp chin and skinny limbs and a hideous forehead," Loki protested, for he was feeling fluttery and light again, and that could not stand, that was not a mood he could do much proper seducing in.

"All true," Thor muttered, against his ear. "All gorgeous."

Then he tugged Loki to the bed, pulling Loki onto his lap despite Loki's undignified squawk, and begin to kiss him senseless. Loki promptly melted. He didn't mean to be so stupid in response to Thor's mouth on his, in response to Thor's warm tongue, in response to Thor's hands pulling him close. Only such simple intimacies were something he'd never considered he might have for himself, let alone from Thor. He'd dreamed up all manner of nimble amusements with Thor, deliciously dirty things, but somehow never permitted his imagination to stretch to this, to comfort and soft caresses.

So they stayed like this for some time, enjoying each other's taste. Loki wasn't going to end the kissing. Loki's mind was wiped blank with every press of Thor's lips. Thor was the one to break it off, breathing out hard. His hands locked on Loki's hips and pressed Loki down, so that Loki could feel the hard outline of his cock against Loki's own sex, separated by their damnable trousers.

It was enough to make Loki go damp. He let out a pathetic little whine, reaching for his laces. Thor put a hand on his hand.

"Let me," he said. 

Loki swallowed hard. He wanted that. He wanted Thor to unwrap him and Thor to hold him in place and Thor to take him. Thor to keep tracing along the vee of Loki's hips, the touch a taunt that had Loki's own cock straining. But after a moment, Thor's hands stilled. Loki stared at him with betrayed eyes. Thor's own gaze was serious and a little questioning.

"You will tell me if I'm going too far," he said, the words slow and certain. "If I'm to take you the way you desire, Loki, I must trust that you will not let me use you in a manner that does not please you. I must trust that you will _trust_ me."

Loki felt almost like laughing. Thor must have no idea just how far Loki was willing to let him go. Loki had been used by worse sorts, and to be used by Thor was a secret little dream. 

"I will say 'Folkvangr' if I want you to stop," he promised. 

Thor cracked a small grin at that. Loki, for his part, ground down on Thor again.

Thor stroked along his thighs, once, twice. His firm touch was a tease Loki wanted to chase with his hips. But doing this only made Thor smile at him, slow and knowing. He pressed Loki back and pulled off Loki's trousers. This left Thor tall and strong and damnably _clothed_ above the naked, needy creature that was Loki. Loki reached up for the laces of his shirt. In response, Thor took Loki's discarded trousers and wound them around his arms, pulling Loki up into a sitting position and securing Loki to the bed's rough-hewn headboard. It was the work of a moment, with Thor so intent and self-assured. Loki was thus exposed to him completely.

His cock strained up, purple and swollen between his legs. His cunt seemed only able to leak and leak. This was supposed to be a silly fantasy even Loki didn't want to admit to, Loki helpless and bare while Thor stood above him, miraculously interested in Loki's pathetic mewling. But now the fantasy was coming true, and Loki could only shift his helpless legs open, stupid with want. 

Thor undid the laces of his own trousers. Loki heard himself make a rough, distant sound. Thor's cock emerged, thick, with the head already leaking. Loki felt a brief pang of disappointment that Thor had not made him fish for it, bob for it in desperation. Then Thor's strong hands fisted in his hair and pulled him in. The heavy cock hit Loki's cheeks, first one, then the other, smearing his face with those first strings of pre-come.

"How is it, brother?" Thor asked him roughly, rubbing it into his cheeks. "Is this what you wanted for so long?" 

"Yes," Loki said, licking his lips. " _Yes_ , Thor—"

Loki tried to twist, to get the head in his mouth. Thor chuckled.

"Ah, that's always how I know the truth with you. Not by what you say, brother, but by what you do."

He fed Loki the tip, holding Loki in place so Loki could not at first take more. Loki could only make noises of complaint in the back of his throat as he suckled Thor, begging with his eyes for Thor's whole length. Thor stroked his throat gently.

"I know, I know," he told Loki, voice too soothing for the firm grasp he had on Loki's hair. "You're a zealous cocksucker, aren't you, brother?"

Loki nodded around the cock in his mouth, and was rewarded with an inch more of it, sliding in, hitting closer to the back of his throat. He groaned around it, wanting more.

Thor kept on stroking his throat, impervious to Loki's begging.

"I'm not your first. I'll wager I'm not even your fiftieth. Think of all the _time_ you wasted, Loki. Spreading yourself about the nine realms like a slut—"

Loki's cock jumped. He was so hard now it was painful.

"—daydreaming of me all the while, and never once going for what you really wanted. That was stupid of you, wasn't it?"

Loki nodded again. In response, Thor fed him a bit more. Enough now to choke him, though it still was nowhere near the whole length. Loki breathed in through his nose. It was harder now to nod, with such a heaviness straining his mouth, but still he managed to acquiesce to every point Thor made, just to be fed more of it.

"That stupidity ends now," Thor said. "No one will have you now save me, Loki. It's me you always wanted, isn't it? It's me you thought of when you tasted your first cock, not so talented as you are now. It's me you wanted to take you first, me you wanted deep in your folds. In your rear, too, I'll wager. You wrote me taking both, over and over. How long have you had that fantasy, I wonder? Since you left Asgard? Since we first met?"

Now he was fully in Loki's mouth and it was a struggle for Loki to breathe. He tasted, smelled Thor, his forehead pressed to Thor's flat stomach, his cheeks hollowed around Thor's cock, Thor's heavy balls on his chin. Now he could bob and suck in earnest, putting his skills to use. It was at once perfect and not enough, not when he wanted the very cock he was worshipping to split the folds of his cunt. Tears of desperation made a mess of his face, mingling with the slicks of Thor's pre-come. He tried to rut against Thor's leg, despite being awkwardly positioned to do this, and despite the trails of his own pre-come he left on Thor's bunched-up trousers. He needed to give his own desperate cock some release.

Thor frowned.

"Ah, you'll not come like that," he said, plain about it. He pulled Loki's head off of his length, ignoring Loki's cry of dismay. The red, bulbous head smacked Loki's cheeks again, once, as if to chastise Loki.

"You withheld yourself for so long, withheld this from both of us," Thor said firmly. "The least you can do now is come on my cock, brother."

"I _want_ to!" Loki forced out, the words coming out raspy from his sore throat. Thor cupped his chin.

"You'll not convince me with your words," he told Loki. "We discussed this. I want truth from you, so I'm looking at your actions, remember?"

Oh, but Loki had little recourse with his actions, trussed as he was to the headboard. He tried every trick at his disposal now, every sign of want he had. Licking his lips again. Trying to bob again for Thor's cock. Arching his back, presenting his nipples, in case Thor wanted those. He supposed he must look pathetic, but Thor seemed satisfied. He kicked off the remainder of his trousers, pulled off his shirt. Now Loki could see all of him, his broad chest and arms, his magnificent legs.

"Thor, please," Loki begged. His legs were spread as open as he could get them, and now, finally, Thor appeased him by kneeling between them. They were face to face, and Loki was glad his face was already wet with tears and pre-come. Thor would not notice the new tears, the strange delighted ones. Thor was naked before him, naked for Loki. And while he knew by now that Thor had bad taste in romantic partners and was willing to share his bed with just about anyone, it still shocked him that Thor wanted now to share his bed, his life, with _Loki_ of all people. 

_I did not plan for this,_ Loki thought. _I did not lie or trick in order to get this. He is simply giving me what I want because he knows I want it._

In exchange for little more than shameless honesty. 

He arched his back again, waiting. Thor gathered up the mess on his cheeks and fed it to him, letting Loki suck at his fingers a bit. It did little to help the need coursing through Loki, but it was something for Loki to focus on, sucking and sucking and hoping Thor understood his gratitude and want by this.

Thor's other hand dipped lower. He brushed not Loki's cunt, but Loki's other hole, that exposed little pucker that was so much dirtier. The pad of his finger pressed gently there. Loki's eyes widened. Thor chuckled.

"Not tonight," he reassured Loki. Or perhaps disappointed Loki. It was hard to tell, though either way Loki was prepared to let him have that every night if he liked. Loki had dreamed about that burning stretch. He made a sad little noise around Thor's fingers.

"I will have you there soon enough, though," Thor promised. "I want every part of you, brother. I always have. That is what you didn't know all this time. That was my stupidity, not telling you, not showing you. I wanted you since the moment we met."

Now Loki couldn't hide the tears, great stupid embarrassing things rolling down his cheeks. Despite those tears, he was not unhappy, far from it. He was tense and desperate and his cunt felt so empty he wanted to scream, but he was happy. Happy even though he should have felt humiliated and exposed. It defied explanation. 

"Thor," he tried again, pathetically, when Thor's fingers left his mouth. This time Thor did not chastise him for speaking. Instead Thor's hands ghosted over Loki's folds, one finger tracing the weeping slit at the center. Loki felt so sensitive and vulnerable there. 

" _Thor_ ," he begged.

"I'm going to spread you a bit," Thor told him, even as he fed Loki a finger. Loki welcomed the intrusion. He was so wet it slid in without pain, but it was an unmistakable presence in him, making him hiccup at how Thor explored him. Pressed inside him. Stroked his cock with his free hand, and then fed him another finger. Loki took it. Thor worked the two inside him, twisting and rubbing. The breach felt good, and then two fingers became three. Three was a more painful stretch, and yet the insistent pleasure only grew, overtaking any discomfort. Loki blinked through the sensation, moaning a little.

"We'll do more than this," Thor promised. "I'd like to get a fist in you, someday, if that is something you'll allow, brother—"

A wanton wail slipped out of Loki at the thought. _Allow_? Thor was actually going to kill him with this pretense that Loki had any boundaries with him. With Thor, Loki had so few it was almost laughable. 

"—but we will do sweeter things, too," Thor said. "I loved eating this little hole of yours. I'll do every morning if you'll let me, breakfast on the taste of you. And if you'd like to reverse things, then I'd like to see you over me, guiding my cock into this cunt. Riding me, taking your pleasure. But if this is what you prefer, then we shall do more of this. I'll use you to cool myself in the heat of these Lands Below, have you quivering, sitting on my lap with my cock inside you while I suckle these sweet pebbles—"

His mouth found one of Loki's nipples. His fingers receded, but the press of his cockhead took their place. Loki was incoherent now. 

"All of it," he sobbed. "All, Thor—"

Thor hoisted up his thighs, surged forward into him. He didn't give Loki a moment to process it. One moment he was painfully empty, the next painfully full, and the sudden fullness was dizzying. His toes curled and his cock twitched, dribbling pre-come between them. It bobbed in time to Thor's thrusts. Thor leaned forward and kissed him.

"And we will do this," he promised. "I'll kiss you as I take you, love. Kiss you every moment I have you. If you ever feel like I am not your home, come to me and let me kiss you, give me a chance to convince you, Loki, that you are loved —"

Loki's cock twitched again. He came with a yell, making a mess on his stomach, all because of Thor's and Thor's promises. That was half of his need answered, but not nearly the most insistent half, for the pressure in his cunt was still building and building.

"Please," he begged, nodding, sobbing, not wanting Thor to stop. "Yes, please, Thor—"

Thor kissed away his tears and kept driving into him. Hollowing him out with pleasure, pulling out enough that he left Loki's walls twitching emptily, then driving back in with a roughness that was so much better than anything Loki could have ever dreamt up. And kissing Loki. In the morning, Loki would be so sore that there would be no doubt Thor had used him, which was what Loki wanted. But he'd also be so — so _loved_ , as Thor said. Loki hadn't realized how badly he wanted that.

"Or perhaps you can take me," Thor proposed, harsh now, like he had been controlling himself and now simply couldn't, like he was close to coming. "Perhaps we could do that as well. Your cock in me, Loki —"

Loki came on the very next thrust, came because Thor was taking him apart. He was a shrieking, messy thing, and yet Thor, too, came. Like he liked that. Liked Loki. 

Thor untied him, then. Pulled him close despite the mess between them, despite the mess dripping out of Loki. Pressed their foreheads together, brought another kiss to Loki's lips, the tickle of his beard a sweet, faint reminder of how roughly he was willing to take his pleasure. 

"For now, though, I'll hold you," he told Loki. "That's what I want, Loki."

Loki, drowsy and happy in his arms, let him do just that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if I will be able to update on Monday, but I will try! If not, the next chapter should be up on Thursday.
> 
> Next chapter: Ymir demands his third winter.


	19. Courting the King

Thor could have slept clear through the next two days, right up until Helblindi's feast, but Loki proved to be a more restless creature. He seemed to sleep only a few hours at a time, and was prone to rounds of insomniac pacing. 

Thor slept through the first round. But the second roused him, for it was oddly cold in his room. Perhaps this was Loki's doing, though Thor couldn't see how, as Loki was mostly just muttering about the mess of underlinens in the corner.

"Did you just vanish my last clean pair of sleeping leggings?" Thor said, squinting at him.

"Those were not clean," said Loki.

"You're replacing them," Thor said. "Now come back to bed."

Loki came, albeit with a lot of words about what inadequate serving staff New Asgard must have. Thor now discovered that half of the bed was sticky and uncomfortable, and set about shoving and rearranging sheets until he had a decent spot in which to draw Loki back in his arms.

"More holding?" Loki asked, like this was ridiculous.

"Normal lovers hold each other as they drift off to sleep, brother."

Loki's answering look was incredulous, but he let Thor hold him again. He did not, however, immediately let Thor drift back to sleep.

"What shall your land be?" he demanded, apropos of nothing.

"What?" Thor said.

"Your land," Loki repeated. "Your father has Valhalla. Your sister has Hel. Your mother has Folkvangr."

Ah.

Hm. This was a somewhat difficult topic to explain, particularly as Thor himself had never quite understood it.

“Folkvangr is a green and splendid place, all field and garden,” he offered instead, running a hand through Loki’s hair. “I asked mother once, when we were young. I complained when she told me about it, for I thought I wanted a battlefield fit for glory and war. She said she was not making it for _me_.”

She'd said this with a look at the skinny, slumbering creature, recently-arrived from Jotunheim, which she had just brought up from the servants' quarters despite his father's protests. Thor had been too young to understand that, while Hela had created a place for war and wickedness, and Odin for rigid order, Thor's mother had only ever wanted a place for all those who could not fit anywhere else. Thor's mother was the sort to make a place for those.

“And your land?” Loki asked again. “Tell me it’s not a battlefield. Hela has that covered.”

Thor frowned. 

“I don’t have one,” he said. “I always thought there was something wrong with me.”

Loki raised his eyebrows, like the thought that there might be anything wrong with Thor was preposterous. But it didn't feel particularly silly to Thor. 

"When I was a child," he said, approaching the topic sideways, as one sometimes had to to when there was no real explanation for something, "my power was too much for me, so much so that they gave me Mjolnir. Someone with such ability should surely be able to do as my parents and Hela did, and siphon that power off into a realm the Norns cannot touch. But I never did, for some reason. I never had great control over any of my abilities, over my innate magic, not like the rest of my family. And after I was forced to learn some control, I only wanted to build this living land, here, for my people. I might be able to learn to make my own dying realm, but now I confess I cannot see the point."

Odin had said once, with an assessing look at a very small Thor, that perhaps there were worlds where he had a son who could do more than simply swing a hammer about.

 _I give you this now only to prepare you,_ he'd told Thor, passing his son the hammer Loki had bled so much to win for them. _But someday you must be more than a hammer. A hammer may do for a prince of Asgard, but I have dreamt of a greater place than Asgard. A place greater than Valhalla. Breidablik, the most perfect realm of all, a realm ruled by a king so grand every single piece of the universe would sooner hurl itself into oblivion than hurt him._

But then Thor had accidentally dropped the hammer and nearly taken off his own foot.

 _Perhaps not you, though_ , Odin had said, with a frown. _Perhaps another._

Loki now scowled, as though he too could see something like this memory.

"I'm sure Odin never had the patience to teach you proper control," he snapped. "That was what he should have done, instead of sending me to get that blasted hammer."

"Yes," Thor said simply, although part of the problem had also been that Thor had thought himself too Asgardian, too far above wild magic, to learn from his mother. "You never should have suffered for it."

Loki flushed at this, like he wasn't expecting Thor to admit this so readily. He waved it off. Thor caught hold of his hands as he did so, noticing something now.

"They're hurt," he said. "Your fingers."

The fingers on both his hands, marred by little cuts. Thor traced them gently, frowning again. Loki tried to bat him off.

"It's nothing," he said. "Do you still have that piece of raw magic you took from the world tree? We can give that to your mother in the morning. She'll weave a healing spell out of it, not that this calls for anything so drastic. But it will be a nice lesson for Thrud, to see her do it."

The cuts were livid purple welts. Thor counted at least nine total. He wasn't sure he wanted the little green magic creature transformed into a healing spell, but he also didn't want Loki to keep walking about with such insistent little wounds all over his hands. He sighed and climbed out of bed to look for the magical rabbit-kitten.

"I still have it if you haven't disappeared my trousers," he told Loki, as he rooted around among the one section of the room which seemed to have escaped Loki's swath of devastation. 

"I was about to. They have precome all over them," said Loki. He said it like this was entirely Thor's fault and yet more evidence that Thor lived in a pigsty. Thor seemed to recall, however, that it was Loki's precome.

When he found the trousers, he pulled the green creature from a pocket. It yawned at him. 

"It seems a shame to sacrifice it," Thor mused, but started for the door nevertheless. Frigga would not mind being woken, if it meant helping Loki.

"Where are you going?" Loki demanded.

"To wake mother, of course. If she's the only one that can heal you—"

"She's the only one with the patience to teach your child how to shape and control magic, something every child needs to learn and which you just admitted you probably cannot teach Thrud yourself," Loki said, like he had never quite dropped their first topic of conversation for the far more pressing issue of healing his hands. "Anyone can heal me. _I_ can heal me."

"Then why don't you?" Thor said, confused. "Why walk about in pain?"

Loki looked caught out, for some reason.

"It's my pain," he said defensively. "Am I not even allowed my pain?"

"Not if you're hurting yourself," Thor said slowly. Then Loki's words caught up to him. "Anyone can heal you?"

Loki sighed. 

"Come here," he said. "And shave off a bit of that magic."

Thor went to him, but didn't shave off a bit of the little green creature because he didn't see how such a thing was possible. When he was seated on the bed, Loki likewise sat up and showed him, coating one black nail in frost and then sliding that nail clear through the center of the little belly and slicing the thing into two kitten-rabbits. The two began licking each other. Loki dumped them in Thor's lap.

"Now you try," he said. "Use your magic. They won't be harmed."

Thor squinted down at the kitten-rabbits. He picked one up and tried to do as Loki had done, minus the frost, which seemed beyond him.

"Not how _I_ do it," Loki said, annoyed. "Use your magic!"

"My magic is the thunder," Thor told him slowly. "The great hammer of the gods transmuted to storm and might, an enormous bolt of power which would cleave this very hall in two."

It had been some time since he'd called a storm, though he'd come close to unleashing one when Loki and the children had been kidnapped. But he still knew the power he held, too great to simply let loose on a whim.

"How nice for you," Loki said. "It would cleave the hall in two because you're apparently still very bad at controlling it in small doses, which is why I'm trying to teach you that."

Thor blinked at him.

"How does this heal your hands?"

Loki sighed. He cleaved one of the kitten-rabbits into two more, then repeated the action, then wound ice around one of the creatures until it curled into a ball, then patted the ball into a paste, then smeared it one one of his cuts. The cut knitted itself up before Thor's eyes. Then the paste sprouted legs and became a rabbit again.

"This is how children learn to heal things," he complained. "It's very basic, just borrowing the strength of another creature by channeling your own through it. But you're going to do it eight more times, using your own power to manipulate the raw magic. And if you're any good at it, I'll teach you a bit more."

"And someday — what?" Thor said. "My own hall to rival my father's?"

Such a thing was preposterous, not to mention unnecessary. There were already three whole halls for the dead, and Thor truly did prefer to expend his energies helping the living. But Loki waved his fingers at him again.

"I don't see why not," he said. "You can't expect me to belong to you—"

"You belong to yourself," Thor protested, for he had meant to ask the All-Winter for the right to love and care for Loki, not for the right to own him. Loki had been subjugated enough.

Loki looked away for a moment.

"I'd like to be both," he said, the words plainly difficult for him. "Mine and yours. And I cannot let myself be yours without offering some use to you—"

"I don't want to _use_ you—" Thor protested.

Loki made a harsh, irritated motion, as though he and Thor ran on parallel tracks, thought in parallel ways, and nothing would make him cross over to Thor's way of thinking. 

"And I would have you be the finest king, the most powerful king any realm has ever known, limited by nothing so ridiculous as a lack of control or an Asgardian unwillingness to learn basic magic," Loki continued ruthlessly. "Now. Try again. We will do this all night until you learn what your family should have taught you years ago, so that you might teach it to your daughter."

Thor frowned, thinking this over.

If he was an optimist, and he was, then perhaps this did not have to be about Loki wanting to be of use. Perhaps it was only that Loki, in his own contradictory, twisting way, wanted to love and care for Thor.

He tried again.

-

In the morning, thanks to a long night of splitting kitten-rabbits with minor lightning bolts (which destroyed the sheets, and left the little creatures gamboling about madly, batting merrily at the pillows), Thor overslept. 

He woke feeling triumphant, nevertheless, for he had succeeded in healing Loki's hands. And because he'd made a promise the night before, to start each day bringing Loki pleasure, tasting Loki. It had been a sweet promise to make, a promise to bring himself joy as well as Loki. And perhaps it would do what mere promises couldn't. Perhaps it would further convince Loki that Thor meant New Asgard to be Loki's home, a proper home, not a place he would have to be useful to. 

But Loki was not in bed. Thor had the brief dreadful thought that perhaps Loki had packed up his things and gone away entirely. He cleared kitten-rabbits off of himself and went out to the main room, hasty and half-panicked. But Loki was right there, talking to Frigga, staving off the strange chill of the morning in a warm woolen dressing gown that Thor recognized as his own. His hair was wet. Magni was on his lap. Thrud was hopping in place before Loki and her grandmother, holding up an edge of Frigga's tapestry as Frigga held the other edge.

Brunnhilde stormed out of the bathroom.

"What use have you for all our hot water?" she snapped. "It's freezing now!"

Then she stormed back in.

"You need more than one bathroom," Loki informed Thor, then resumed his conversation with Frigga, which seemed to involve the tapestry. Loki seemed to be advocating to make it more of a family portrait. Thor could feel his eyebrows climbing up his forehead. It was a marvelous relief, to go from thinking Loki might run off to finding Loki asking for something like this, asking in his own sly way to be counted among them. It was all Thor wanted. 

Then Loki rather ruined it by holding Magni out to Thor and saying, "This is yours."

Thor took his son, though Magni immediately began demanding "oki" again. Loki preened at this. Since Thor was the one now holding the baby, Loki's hands were now free for him to play peek-a-boo while he spoke. Magni cooed delightedly as Loki continued.

"Your mother says you will have to interview nannies today, since he'll be living here full-time from now on," he said. Magni living with them was wonderful, of course, so Thor broke into a smile, but that was short-lived as he realized what more he would have to do.

He couldn't spend the day with Loki, with his mother and his friends and his children, never mind how much he wanted to, how much he wanted to draw Loki into their circle and convince him that this circle could also be Loki's. Instead, there was the latest harvest to attend to. There were the tests for those who might wish to join the new Valkyrie band. There were several disputes that needed seeing to, and a whole section of New Asgard would need new plumbing laid below the streets, for the heat of the last season had corroded the old pipes. He would have to meet with Sten and the others who had seen to Ymir, to determine what effect restoring the giant would have on both Ymir and the local climate, and he owed a visit to several families who had already offered to house the Jotnar slaves who might resettle here, to thank those families for their welcome and kindness.

So Thor spent the day as a king did. Working.

But there were flashes of relief, of family. He saw Sif and Brunnhilde at the Valkyrie trials, and his mother when he held audience to settle the latest disputes. Frigga was also at the royal thank-you ceremonies for each of the hosting families and she brought the children along to these, so there Thor was able to spend some time with Thrud and Magni. In short, despite the busyness of the day, he still stole moments with nearly every person he loved. 

But not with Loki. Loki was nowhere to be found. He didn't even appear in the main hall to hear Sten's report, though Thor had sent one of the Aesir-in-waiting to fetch him. 

"That Ymir no longer burns quite so much is clear," Sten told Thor thoughtfully. "It is not so blisteringly hot as it was, though he still gives off fire. But he does seem to suffer less, though—"

"Though?" Thor prompted.

"As we discussed when we found the creature, abating his suffering is a fine aim," Sten said. "But now that we've done it, we don't know what will become of our climate here in the Lands Below. If Ymir grows colder, so too does the whole realm. And it is not as though we Aesir have a heat source of our own here, to keep our portion of the realm from becoming too cold—"

"We will find a way," Thor said. They'd discussed this when they had first found Ymir, so some of the Aesir were already working on a means to survive a great chilling. There had been some dissent when Thor had made clear that such a thing might be a possibility, but he'd long ago decided that he could not in good conscience permit Jotunheim and Ymir to suffer. The Aesir were hardy. They could adapt. They must adapt, for Thor was certain that no good had ever come of forcing their way, stealing and invading and conquering what rightfully belonged to others.

Now he looked at Sten thoughtfully and said, "Let us meet tomorrow morn, with all of those who know Ymir, to take stock of what has changed."

"It is several degrees cooler already, even now," Sten noted. "By our calculations, full winter will descend on the edges of New Asgard in less than a month. For the lands close to the surface, the marshes, the Ironwood... Those may well be pure winter by tomorrow evening, my king."

This had been clear to Thor as well, given the chilliness of the morning, but adjusting to the cold would take more minds than his and Sten's. They'd need to meet with not only with those who could get them through this initial shift in the climate, but perhaps even eventually with all of Old Asgard's once-scientists and engineers, with their fledgling mages, with the men and women who had built a whole new land in a strange place, who had overseen the harvest and who'd already innovated new ways to make this land comfortable and fruitful for the Aesir. 

"Never mind just Ymir's team, then. Round up all who can help us determine how to survive the chill," Thor decided. "This will take our best."

Sten nodded. Then he said, "There is one more thing, my king..."

Here he broke off again, clearly uncertain as to how to finish his report.

"Yes?" Thor said.

"Ymir speaks," Sten said. "Not very much. But he asks for his missing winter."

Thor frowned. And now he saw, in the corner of the hall, Loki shimmering into view, half-hidden behind a pillar. Thor hoped that Loki understood that this meant it was not safe. That they would have to keep Loki away from Ymir, until they found some means of preventing the creature from hurting him.

"Keep Ymir under guard," Thor ordered, shifting his attention back to Sten. "He may be too large to leave his cavern, but I want to know the moment he tries. He is not to be permitted to harm Prince Loki in any way."

When he looked back at Loki, Loki was gone. Thor couldn't help a glimmer of anxiety at this, but he kept it at bay as best he could, for now it was time to interview nannies and lay pipes. 

He wouldn't see Loki again until the evening. He stumbled into his room, intending to change for Helblindi's feast, and found the space completely different. The bed was bigger. All of his clothing appeared to have vanished, along with the kitten-rabbits. There was large, airy alcove to the left of the bed with a writing desk and a shelf of books, taken from Norns-knew-where. Before the bed, there was a great sitting area with two luxurious divans and a fluffy rug made of monkey fur. Thor's axe had pride of place above a brand new fireplace, just above Thrud's drawings. To the right of the bed, there was a doorway that had not existed before.

Thor passed through it and discovered a room all hung with clothing. It was not his clothing. His clothing appeared to be piled in a bin in the corner, waiting to be collected by a servant or possibly to be thrown out. Beyond this bin there was another doorway, and beyond this a bathing room. Here Thor noticed first, with dread, the hasty travel spell laid out on the floor. 

But Loki hadn't left yet. There was that small bit of relief. Instead, Loki stood in the center of a sunken bathing pool. The water before him revealed a great ugly room with walls of red and white, and a man whose whose steely hair was bizarrely coiffed into three wavy peaks. 

"No, I'm not going to just pull it," the man was saying. "It's a hit! It's been translated into seven-hundred-and-seventy-eight languages! And you can't just call me while I'm enjoying myself with my Champion—"

A roar shook the scene, and a massive green arm reached out and grabbed the man. Loki jumped. So did Thor. Loki, who did not yet realize Thor was watching him, recovered quickly.

"Nothing about the last time I spoke to him suggested he was enjoying himself," he told the man archly. 

"Ah, ah, ah," said the man, caressing the broad green arm that was shaking him all over the frame, dark eyes alight with perverse glee. "But you saw what happened when I made him sit through _The Wicked Brother_! It really does the trick getting him to shift from form to form. Getting him, uh, _engorged_ enough to give way to this luscious, tender, amazing Champion of mine, with these, ah, bouncing green nipples, lively green nipples, and this strong, massive—"

Thor decided it was time to intervene. He waded into the freezing cold water next to Loki, ignoring Loki's startled shriek, and said, "What's going on here?"

Loki looked caught out. But the lunatic in the pool kept talking, although he was now being flung about and roared at, his horrible green pet yelling and bashing him into the hideous walls.

"I'm the Grandmaster!" he managed, between lusty moans, "and you are, aha! Can it be? Yes, yes, yes. _Angrboda_!"

Thor stared at Loki, silently demanding an explanation. Loki sighed. The Grandmaster kept talking.

" _Ah_ , yes! He begs me to cease publishing your story, your terrible romance! But, uh, why should I? It's so useful! My Champion loves it! The universe loves it, from here to the Kree Empire! And why wouldn't they love it, huh? They got the expanded edition, the one with where Angrboda reveals he has tentacles—"

"I'm trying to get rid of the book," Loki hissed now, at Thor. "He's the one who spread it all over the universe, and I wanted to get him to undo that—"

The Grandmaster was humping a large green arm with shocking abandon, but still found time to say, "You, ah, can't put the lightning back in the bottle!"

This was all rather too much for Thor.

"Cut the connection," he ordered, and was gratified when Loki did. This left them staring at each other in the pool, both sopping wet and cold from the waist down, which was perhaps a good thing given the perversely pornographic scene they'd just viewed. Thor was now beginning to see how, perhaps, Loki had developed his rather worldly sexual appetite. 

Not that that mattered right now. That travel spell held all of Thor's attention.

"You were planning to leave," he said gruffly, gesturing at it. Though Loki was of course free to leave. He could not tell Loki not to. That was the whole trouble. If Thor were even a little bit more of a tyrant, there would be no issue here, but Thor, regrettably, was not.

"Do you think I'd redecorate your quarters to my liking and then just leave you?" Loki said, rolling his eyes. "I told you. I wanted to fix this business with that stupid book."

"So you were going to visit that mad friend of yours to make sure he recalls the book?" Thor said, wanting to hear it confirmed. Something here did not quite add up. There was some piece he was missing. 

Loki shifted from foot to foot, little ripples of cold fanning out around him.

"Yes," he admitted. "But..."

"But?" Thor said. The cold of the pool seemed to seep into his very bones. He wanted to reach out an arm and destroy that travel spell, but couldn't make himself do such a thing to Loki. 

"That green beast," Loki said, and then paused like he was unsure of how to proceed.

Thor had a terrible, sinking feeling. Loki's mad friend had been stripping his clothes off and rubbing himself all over the beast, rather than fighting the creature. And perhaps Loki, perhaps he—

"My lusts are not enough for you," Thor managed, forcing the horrible truth to come out. "You wish for even greater domination, don't you, brother? An even more terrible sexual appetite—"

" _What_?" Loki said. "No, Thor, I don't want to have sex with it!"

He looked aghast, and Thor was horribly, selfishly glad.

"Then what purpose could he possibly serve?"

"He is large enough to put the fear of the Norns into even Ymir," Loki said. "I called En Dwi to make him stop publishing the novel, but when that beast showed itself I had a different idea—"

"We're not going to attack Ymir with a horrifying green giant," Thor said, appalled at the very notion. "Brother, before we resort to such violence, we should try talking to Ymir, reasoning with him."

Loki flicked the surface of the water, plainly irritated.

"Something so stupid as Ymir cannot be _reasoned_ with, Thor. And all your attempts to help me and help him are harming you. You've reversed his all-powerful heat, very good. But aren't you harming yourself by doing it? You heard Sten: as Ymir grows colder, so too do the Lands Below, and you have no heat source here to keep New Asgard as pleasant and golden as you like it."

Thor could see now where the twisted paths of Loki's mind had led him. This was more of wanting to be used and useful, a tool for Thor and perhaps all of New Asgard. Loki wished to frighten Ymir, perhaps to take the remaining two winters from him and cast him back into his all-consuming flame. The green monster could be a means of shielding Loki himself from Ymir, while Loki did great wrong to the first giant, all in the name of Thor and Thor's people. 

It was a plan worthy of Odin. Indeed, where else could Loki have learned to think like this, to plunge headlong into courses both wicked and dangerous to himself? Thor frowned. He pulled himself out of the pool and went to stand over the travel spell, dripping onto it. With the toe of his boot, he nudged a corner of the complicated pattern. It took all his will not to do more than that.

"Thor?" Loki said, hesitant.

"You will not concern yourself with how this impacts New Asgard," Thor said, firm and plain. "It is not your job to save my land, brother. It is mine."

"But Thor," Loki said, tone gone a bit wheedling now as he pulled himself out of the pool and came to drip next to Thor, "the beast is not simply a beast. He has another form, smaller and plainer but perhaps just as useful. As I understand it, that version of the beast has seven Ph.D.s—"

"A few letters?" Thor said. "What does that mean? What do I care that he has some letters?"

No, it was of greater concern to him that Loki still schemed and plotted, still dreamed up ways to be useful. At great cost to himself, to his person and to his integrity. Apparently Loki could not see that simply his being here was enough.

But Loki was shaking his head now, like Thor was being very trying indeed.

"Those letters signal that he is a man of learning among his people. A man of brilliance. One who could perhaps help us determine how to help Ymir and protect me _and_ save the New Asgard from freezing over."

He stepped up to Thor, heedless of how he disrupted the patterns he'd drawn on the floor, and danced his fingers along Thor's collarbone.

"I was going to leave for Sakaar," he admitted. "But not to leave you. Only to welcome another refugee here, brother. The green beast's other self, the wise man who might yet help us if we get him from En Dwi's clutches. You've been so generous with the slaves. Why, you inspired me, Thor, to mount my own rescue, one that might help both the green beast and New Asgard itself."

This was too smoothly said, too sweet to trust. Made sweeter by the kisses Loki now pressed along Thor's jaw, kisses to deflect from his tangled aims. But Thor could find no flaw in Loki's reasoning now, no matter how he examined it. 

And Thor hadn't actually rescued anyone in a while, not properly. Loki, after all, had rescued himself. And now that all of their heroic adventures had wrapped up, all those visits to the realms of the dead, all that bargaining with wicked old giants, he had to admit that he really enjoyed that sort of thing.

"How long will it take to get to this Sakaar and back?" Thor asked.

"If we do it tonight, we could be back in time for Helblindi's feast," said Loki, a grin playing on his lips. 

-

So after this it was settled. New Asgard's first refugee was not to be one of the palace slaves, but an altogether stranger sort. This meant that they arrived at Helblindi's feast very battered and somewhat late, charging into a hall already full of giants, Valkyries, and the rest of the two royal families. Their large green companion and general disheveled appearance made Thor's mother shoot them a very disappointed look, alarmed most of the giants present, thrilled Thrud — who naturally loved the Hulk the moment she saw him and jumped about so excitedly that she ruined her best dress — and quite inadvertently provided the evening's entertainment.

Helblindi adored the Hulk, a creature so strong and powerful that the king could not help but puff out his chest and demand that the Hulk join him and the Valkyries on a Snorli hunt.

"HULK WANTS TO SMASH," said the Hulk. "CAN HULK SMASH SNORLIS?"

"I don't see why not," said Brunnhilde, who also appeared to enjoy the creature. 

"THEN HULK WILL STAY FOR DINNER," the green beast decided. It then picked up an entire platter of iced fish and devoured it, platter and all, as both Thor's band and all the noble giant clans watched in amazement.

"Can Hulk stay forever?" begged Thrud then, catching hold of her father's arm and digging her nails in like she hoped by this to force Thor to agree.

"We don't have nearly enough fish on Jotunheim for that," Loki murmured, and Thor decided that enough was enough. 

"How can we get his other form to appear?" he hissed at Loki. "The smaller, plainer one? The wise man?"

Loki sighed. He beckoned at one of the Aesir present, a sprightly blonde new Valkyrie recruit named Saga, and muttered something at her. She beamed, then held out a book to Loki. Thor groaned, as the Grandmaster's earlier comments finally made sense. Of course. Of course.

"HULK'S FAVORITE BOOK," Hulk said now. He thumped the table so hard all of the remaining fish platters jumped at least a foot, making many of the assembled giants stare at him enviously. "GOOD! HULK LOVES EROTIC TENSION."

"Shall you, or shall I?" Loki said to Thor.

" _Not_ one of the sex scenes," Thor hissed, for his mother and both of his children were present.

"HULK WANTS LULLI AND ANGRBODA'S WEDDING SCENE," Hulk said stubbornly. "IN THE IRONWOOD."

Thrud hopped up to the enormous beast, dodging her father's arms, and said, "That sounds boring."

"NOT BORING!" Hulk roared. "FULL OF VIOLENCE AND PASSION!"

"I also want to hear that," Helblindi declared, and so, for that matter, did several giants Thor did not know, Brunnhilde, and Saga. Thor shot Brunnhilde a betrayed look. She shrugged. Loki opened to the appropriate page and began to read. Thor automatically clapped his hands over Thrud's ears, and kept them there despite her squirming. His mother, he noted, was doing the same with little Magni.

" _'Oh, alright, I shall marry you,' Anrgboda sneered handsomely, as Lulli sobbed with joy and relief...'_ "

-

By the end of the appetizer course, the Hulk had calmed so very much that it was almost no surprise at all to see him physically shrink, green body shifting grotesquely into something smaller and plainer. 

Thor lifted his hands from Thrud's ears now. Thrud scowled at him and smacked her fists against his thighs, looking terribly disappointed. Most of the present company seemed to share this sentiment, squinting down at their new dinner companion, who was indeed not much to look at. Some of the giants, however, clapped as though Loki had performed a magic trick. Thor, for his part, felt relieved, as relieved as his mother, Sif, and Byleistr all looked.

Their very naked new guest did not look relieved.

"Oh my god," he said, blinking around at the assembled company, chiefly composed of giants. "Oh my god, oh my god. How much gamma radiation did it take to make _you_ guys?"

Then he proceeded to hyperventilate and make a general fuss, not unlike Magni. Thor, who along with Loki was sitting nearest to the former Hulk, passed Thrud to his mother and began to soothe the man the best way he knew how.

"Why are you singing at me about ducks and rabbits?" the once-Hulk said, shooting panicked looks all around the feasting hall. "Who are you? Where am I? What's happening?"

"Calm yourself," Loki said haughtily. "You are the man with the seven Ph.D.s, and I, Prince Loki of Jotunheim, have rescued you just as you once begged me to. That there is King Thor of New Asgard. That over there is his mother, the Dowager Queen Frigga, and that over there is King Helblindi, the less said about Prince Byleistr there the better, that next to him is—"

Byleistr was scowling by now, but their new guest was pointing a shaking finger at each person Loki named in turn, as though this helped keep him grounded. Now he turned the finger on himself.

"Bruce Banner," he managed. "Can I get some clothes? And wait — were you reading that horrible book?"

Loki broke off, purpling with offense.

"You like that book!" he said. "You just said you did!"

Bruce Banner shook his head and proceeded to demonstrate that he was wise indeed.

"The other guy likes that book, which is why it soothes him back into me. But me, I hate that book! You read me that book and you get the other guy. Know why? Because that book is terrible. That book is slop."

"An affront to art," murmured Byleistr, with a satisfied gleam in his eye now.

"Horrible," Brunnhilde agreed, with a sideways look at Loki, for Thor _may_ have shared the details of who authored _The Wicked Brother_ with her and Sif.

Sif, for her part, was laughing outright. 

"Remember the part where Helga sobs for seven chapters?" she said.

"And Lulli keeps being imprisoned," said Brunnhilde. "By his own father." 

"I really thought all the kitten kicking was unnecessary," Frigga murmured.

"Not so unnecessary as all the scenes with all the, ah, staff-play," put in a giant Thor did not know.

"Wait. Has every single person here read it?" Thor put in now, with no small amount of dismay. He thought Loki wanted to say something rather more choice than this, only Loki was busy choking angrily on fish-wine.

"I never got to finish it," Thrud complained, but Banner was talking over her.

"Read it? I had to enact scenes from it. I had to help transfer it to screenplay format," he said, tearing at his hair. "One time I woke up, and it seriously looked like he'd made the other guy wear an eyepatch and a blond wig! Do you know what that's like?"

But then he subsided, as though he was used to talking himself down from the brink. And probably it helped that now Ealfi had appeared, smartly dressed in the manner of a proper giant and not a slave, and passed him a robe. Banner shrugged it on as he contemplated his next words. "I dunno. Maybe it's fine for what it is. I guess I've only read the Sakaarian translation."

"That's the one to read!" said Saga the Valkyrie recruit. "It contains three bonus scenes of uncompensated dubiously consensual seduction."

"Yeah," Banner said. "That's the theme I thought could have been dialed back a bit."

This won him points with Thor, but rather soured him for Loki, who after the feast spent a walk through the palace courtyards to the outer stables glaring at Banner. Banner did not seem to notice, as he was too busy demanding that Thor give him complicated explanations of how the Aesir had stalled the spread of the sun pools.

"So if I help you, would you help another realm deal with global warming?" he asked Thor.

"Gladly," said Thor. 

"Really?" said Banner. "It might be harder to help us. I'm pretty sure our problem isn't as simple as a big fiery guy sitting in the middle of the planet."

"It would nevertheless be my honor," Thor assured him, then looked back at Loki, lingering behind all the others. Loki was bobbing Magni in his arms as he walked, his expression dark for all that he held the child close. 

"A moment," Thor told Banner, and left him firing puzzled questions at Sif and Brunnhilde. He slowed until he was walking behind all the others, lockstep with Loki now.

"You're right that he's wise," Thor told him, for Banner was asking the right sorts of questions. And indeed, once they shook him free of his primitive Midgardian understanding of science, they might truly have someone on their hands who could assist with their new climate problem. Thor thought Loki deserved some credit for that.

"Yes, he's just marvelous," Loki said snippily. "Thrud loves him already."

Thrud was indeed keeping doggedly close to Banner, but Thor thought that was only because she kept trying to pinch, poke, and stab him, and so produce the Hulk. For his part, Banner had already declared her a horrible little kid and asked the Valkyries to please keep her away from him.

This didn't seem to keep Loki from feeling possessive, however. Thor watched as he shifted Magni closer to his chest, murmuring something to the sleeping child. The bright, snow-made light of this newer, colder Jotunheim played on their blue skin, mottling them green and then purple. Thor reached out to brush aside a bit of his son's wild pale hair, then decided to Hel with it. He didn't want to touch _Magni_.

He pulled Loki against him, making Loki sputter.

"Oh, just topple me over, why don't you? It's not an hours' walk back to where we've stabled our mole-bears, no, and I'm not holding your child or anything—"

"More like twenty minutes," said Thor. "And rather pleasant, by giant standards."

"By giant standards, but not yours," Loki said, curt about it. "You heard Sten. True winter will descend on all the Lands Below very soon. Tell me: if I told your mother how foolish you're being, putting Jotunheim and Ymir and me above your people and their own needs, would she overrule your decision?"

Ah. This was what had him so piqued. Not Banner disliking his book, which after all was only a reasonable reaction, but still those wild, foolish plans he'd made to undo all their hard work by taking back Ymir's two winters.

"I thought we'd reached a compromise on this, brother," Thor said, frowning. 

Loki looked away. 

"You were clear enough. I'm not to concern myself with New Asgard," he said. 

The manner in which he said it completely twisted Thor's words about, imbuing them with an offense Thor had never meant to cause. He bit his lip to keep from yelling about it, and tried instead to explain.

"I'm not telling you that I do not want you, or that you do not belong. I mean for my home to be yours if you wish it. But New Asgard has been planning for this possibility ever since we found Ymir. We have no need for you to endanger yourself with wild, wicked schemes—"

"Then what use am I, as your winter?" Loki said. "You say you wish to court me. Have I no right to also court _you_?"

It had never occurred to Thor that Loki might want to do anything of the sort. And certainly he didn't want Loki to do so by involving himself with Ymir. He frowned. Loki's shoulders were stiff beneath his arm.

"Don't court me like that. It was good of you to try and stop the publication of _The Wicked Brother_ —" Thor began, before Loki cut him off with a snort.

"No, it was foolish. Now we've stolen En Dwi's Champion, so he won't be stopping the book. If anything, he might publish sequels. People really will begin to think you have tentacles."

"That doesn't bother me," Thor said, shrugging. 

This was the truth, strangely enough. Plenty of giants at the feast had watched him far too closely, whispered about the similarities between the villain Loki had been describing and the Aesir king who sat before them. Thor had been unmoved by this. It no longer mattered what others thought, so long as his people and Loki knew he was no monster. 

"I don't need you to put yourself at risk for me," Thor said now, plain about it. "I want no courtship from you if it means you parading yourself before Ymir, brother, putting yourself in his grasp. And I forbid you from taking back the two winters we restored to him—"

Loki's eyebrows flew up.

"Taking back the winters?"

"Yes, it will help Asgard," Thor said. "But only at the cost of your own people."

"Ah," Loki said. "Yes. Well, now that you put it that way I can see that you are entirely correct."

And this, too, was too smooth and easy, like Thor was still missing something that should be obvious to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C'mon, Thor. Loki's plans are bad, but they're not so bad that he would actually undo the entire C-plot of the fic. 
> 
> Next chapter: Loki solves climate change.


	20. Winter in the Ironwood

Later, in their grand new bed in their grand new room, Loki was a ferocious thing. 

He asked to again be bound. Thor complied, for it was no trial to give Loki what he wanted. But evidently tonight he wanted to make it more of a trial. Where he had been wantonly willing before, now he gave as good as he got. The moment Thor's mouth touched the petals of his cunt, those long blue legs curled around Thor's neck. He managed to get his bound hands tangled in Thor's hair. He drove Thor into his core, blatant and shameless in his cries, his dripping slick making a mess of Thor's beard. When he came and Thor resurfaced, he disentangled himself from Thor as best he could, swiping one finger across Thor's drenched bottom lip and bringing his bound hands up to his own mouth. He tasted himself as Thor watched, meeting Thor's gaze with wicked abandon.

"You're insatiable," Thor realized. He was hard and aching. No one so contradictory as Loki should be so irresistible, but he was, he always had been and now even more so, flush as he was with desire and submission. 

"You promised me so much," Loki said. "Promised to meet me in this, Thor."

So he had. Thor pressed a finger into the soaking wet of his cunt just to watch him shudder again. Then his other hand found that tight little pucker further back.

"Which one tonight?" he asked. "They're both hungry, I'll wager. Both eager to swallow my cock. Maybe I’ll take you twice, once in each hole, not let you rest—"

Loki seemed unable to help the rough noise he made at this.

Thor grinned.

"Twice it is," he said, and claimed a kiss from Loki before doing just as he promised, once in the front and once from the rear, wringing out enough pleasure to finally sate Loki. After that, Loki was as close as he perhaps ever got to agreeable, and it occurred to Thor that perhaps in a mood such as this, Loki would not mind some earnest talk of the sort that usually seemed a bother to him.

"I will find a way to preserve New Asgard. And I don't mind about the book, even if there are sequels," Thor told him. 

Loki blinked at him.

"How confident you are," he said. "And if I still wanted to fix things, in my own way?"

Thor traced his mouth with a thumb.

"How, with tricks and danger? Every trick has its flaws, brother."

Loki's mouth became a bitter line. Thor struggled to explain better.

"You don't need to prove anything to me or New Asgard, and I tire of suspecting you've something up your sleeve. If I've given you reason to believe my heart is not completely yours, then that is my mistake, and you must tell me how to fix it, but—"

"You're trying to protect me, keep Ymir at bay," Loki forced out, like Thor's protection was incomprehensible to him. "You helped me stave off the All-Winter. Thor, I _know_ your heart is mine. Why it's mine is another question entirely. I know I'm a winter—"

"That's not why," Thor said. "I don't care about that."

He loved Loki for more than that. For how he never enjoyed an adventure so much as when Loki was with him. For how readily Loki could offer new perspectives, for the frustrating challenge Loki always posed. Others, too, had forced Thor to grow, to mature and change. But Loki had always been the most _fun_ test of Thor's worth, slyly defiant, forcing Thor to be better even as he instigated Thor. Thor couldn't imagine life without him now that he had him, now that they were open with their affection. 

"I like you for you, Loki," Thor promised him. Then he kissed him and kissed him until it seemed like Loki believed it.

-

After that, they dozed for a few hours. Or Thor did. When he woke again, Loki had again slipped off. This time he wasn't pacing frantically. He wasn't even in the room. Nor was he in the new closet or bathroom, and when Thor went out to the sitting room he only found Thrud. Someone, probably Sif or his mother, had wrapped her up in several layers of woolen pinafore to ward against the night chill. She was playing with little acid-green bits of raw magic.

Clearly, she was the one Loki had gifted the kitten-rabbits to. Thor crouched down next to her.

"Has Loki taught you what to do with them?" he asked her. "You can make them into a healing paste, you know."

Thrud made a face.

"That would be boring," she said. "And he said he wouldn't, anyway. He said _you'd_ teach me."

"So I shall," Thor agreed. "It isn't boring. You zap them with thunderbolts."

Thrud grinned, gap-toothed and devilish. But then her face fell.

"I don't want to zap these little baby things! I want to zap Snorlis and Hulks and Jarnsaxa!"

"You start with these, which cannot be hurt," Thor said, picking up a little kitten-rabbit and letting it fruitlessly attempt to sink claws it did not have into him. He settled it on Thrud's head, making her laugh as it scrambled about in her hair. 

"Then you work your way up," he finished. "I'm sure you'll be far better at control than I was at your age."

"From what grandmother says, that won't be hard," Thrud said. She squinted up at Thor. 

"You should know you were almost impressive today," she said.

"Only almost?" said Thor.

"Well, you wouldn't let me hear the book and you made Uncle Loki turn Banner into Banner," she said. "I expected the first thing, but I think you could have left Banner a Hulk a little longer. It wouldn't have killed you."

"Sorry," Thor said, not feeling particularly sorry at all. Banner's huge green self probably couldn't kill Thor, no, but it would have made a mess of the feast.

"Me too," Thrud said honestly. "Just now I wanted to ask him and Uncle Loki to turn me into a Hulk, but he just made a stupid face and Uncle Loki refused and kept talking to him about going down to see science in action, whatever that means, and then Uncle Loki told me to go to bed. Me! Uncle Loki should like me better than Banner. And now they've gone off to visit Ymir together—"

"They've what?" Thor said, aghast.

Likely Loki still meant to set the Hulk on Ymir, in order to win back the other two winters. Though they'd talked about it, though Thor had made plain that it was wrong. No, more than wrong. It was a plan so half-baked, so mad, that Thor had trouble believing even Loki would try it. What if the creatures fought and destroyed the very core of the planet? What if one won? If it was the Hulk, and he killed Ymir, what would happen to Jotunheim? If it was Ymir, and he killed the Hulk, what would happen to Loki? 

He rushed to his chamber, seized his axe. Then he rushed back out, instructing Thrud to go alert her grandmother and mothers at once, to tell them he was going to the core to keep the Hulk from attacking Ymir. And then to get in bed, as it was long past her bedtime.

"Not you too!" Thrud said.

But Thor was already well on his way downstairs.

He was out of his hall in an instant, turning towards New Asgard's ever-shining fields. He could feel a storm gathering within him and now he used it, focused on getting to Loki and Banner and Ymir before anything catastrophic could happen. The fields and mushroom forest passed in a blur, and he likewise sped past red rock tunnels and cliffs, leaving the imprint of lightning cut into the rock. 

Then Banner’s incredulous voice stopped him in his tracks. 

"What do you mean, you're the winter and so he might eat you? That doesn't make any sense." 

Banner and Loki sat on the cliff just before the great Ymir, staring down at the slumbering giant. The flames that had coated Ymir had receded, and now the giant's great form was truly visible. Where the All-Winter had been bleached and sickly, Ymir was vividly colorful, a deep royal blue endless as the ocean. It made him seem somehow slippery, like a snake or seal. Despite this, he smoked faintly, heat still emanating from him, albeit far, far less heat than before. He might have made a fascinating picture were it not for his size and the dangerous black cavern of his open mouth. 

Ymir, like the Hulk, could be a threat not merely to Loki, but to anyone. 

"Step away from Ymir," Thor commanded, before Loki could answer Banner. 

Loki twisted around to look at him. He looked exasperated.

"Thor," he said, his mouth quirking down at the corners. "You couldn't sleep a little longer?"

"You couldn't keep yourself from stealing back Ymir's two winters?" Thor demanded.

"That winter stuff still doesn't make any sense," Banner pointed out. "I mean that's not real. That's, like, fairy tale rules, you know? Not science—"

But Loki wasn't listening to him.

"I'm not stealing the winters!" he said. "That was never my plan. What kind of plan would that be?"

"A foolish and insane one, putting you in the crosshairs of danger all to gain some terrible reward you have no right to, and therefore exactly like all of your other plans," Thor pointed out. 

Loki scowled.

"Ouch," Banner said. "I don't even really know you two, but just, like. Ouch."

Thor had to hold himself back from threatening to take off Banner's head. This did not concern Banner. Banner hadn't seen Loki make mad offers to the All-Winter, hadn't seen Loki marching up the Snaer as though to his very death. Loki was very good at eroding the proper boundaries between sane and insane, noble sacrifice and terrible plot. Thor didn't want to chastise him for it. Thor wanted to accept Loki as Loki. But this didn't mean he had to agree with everything Loki did.

"You be quiet," he told Banner, striding up to them now. "You're here as insurance."

"Insurance?" Banner protested. 

Thor nudged Loki in the the side with the toe of his boot, hitting something hard. He reached down and pulled it out of Loki's feather cloak as Loki grimaced. _The Wicked Brother_.

"Insurance," Thor repeated. "He doesn't want you here, but the Hulk, to fight Ymir in case Ymir wakes up. Isn't that right, brother?"

Banner looked insulted, but Loki only threw up his hands.

"Do you want me protected from Ymir or not?" he snapped. 

"I don't know what I want," Thor snapped back. "I don't know what your aim is, brother—"

"One I couldn't share with you, because you would have barred me from coming down here, or else thrown a fit!" Loki cried. "As you're currently doing!"

"It is too dangerous for you to be here," Thor said. "I thought I was clear about that. Do you wish to be devoured by Ymir?"

"Uh, guys?" Banner said, but they both ignored him.

"I wish to reason with him!" Loki said, standing up now, possibly purely so he could stamp his foot with rage. "Isn't that what you wanted? Us to try and talk it out with the great stupid beast?"

"Guys," Banner said.

"I can do that, or Sten, or someone else," said Thor. "It doesn't need to be you."

"I want it to be me," Loki said. "This is my affair, not merely New Asgard's. How quickly you abandon any notions you had of my potential for heroism, once I stop doing what _you_ prefer—"

"Notions?" Thor said, feeling again like Loki had caught hold of his words and twisted them into something unrecognizable, something Thor hadn't meant. Only perhaps this time Thor had had a hand in the twisting, for he _did_ believe Loki a hero, and yet it was so easy to lapse back into thinking Loki a bit wicked despite that. Loki could be both. That was the whole trouble. 

" _Guys_ ," Banner said again, more desperately this time, and just after he said it there was a great, rumbling yawn.

Ymir was waking, far too quickly for such a large creature. Yards upon yards of blue-black flesh, hissing with little wisps of heat, unfurled before them. Huge, unsettlingly pale orange eyes fixed on them. First on Loki, very knowingly. Then on Thor. Then, with some confusion, on Banner. Then back to Thor. The great giant took in a breath and brought a massive hand to his eyebrows, which smoked faintly. Thor found himself stepping in front of Loki, gripping his axe tight. A being so large and fast as Ymir could devour Loki in an instant, but it would be considerably harder for Ymir to do that if he had an axe buried between his eyes.

But Ymir devoured no one just yet.

"Asgard-king," the great giant said instead. "Well met. To you I owe great thanks. For your protection. For trying to ease my hardship. For bringing me my winters.”

Then he folded his massive body, shaking the cavern so much that it took Thor a moment to realize that Ymir was not attacking but bowing. It was a stupendous sight, strangely humbling for all that it ought to have stoked Thor’s arrogance instead. 

But Loki ruined the poetry of the moment.

“And what about me?” he said coolly. “I’m the one who found your winter in Hel, who brought the other winter out of Valhalla. Me. And still that is not enough for you. Still you demand that I be dragged before you, like some sort of hostage.”

Ymir straightened up, still too fast for a creature so large. The cliffside crumbled at the motion and Banner gave a sound of startled dismay and scrambled back. As Loki made no move to step away, neither did Thor, still planted between Loki and Ymir. 

Ymir squinted down at them with that eerie gaze of his.

"Thanks to you as well, then, my iceling," he said, after a moment. "You have given me the first blush of cold, the winter of innocence. And the orderly strength of snow well-settled, the winter of aged wisdom. But you deny me my third winter, my wildest and darkest. Why?”

Loki stepped out from behind Thor, reckless as anything. "Oh, of course," he said, brittle and venomous. "Of course I’m your darkness, your evil. Your mischief and chaos. Even Thor, with all his optimism, cannot help but think me wicked, and naturally even _you_ would agree!" 

At this Thor himself sputtered, but Ymir only narrowed his strange pale eyes.

“You are not _wicked_ , my blizzard,” he said. “My howling wind. You are simply the tricky calm at the center of my freezing storm. The heart of all winter’s shifts and power. Without you, I remain more summer storm than winter, and the brutality of that summer batters at me. You are the only thing that can match it. That is why I need you back, to balance me again.”

"You may need him," Thor put in now, furrowing his brow and sifting through Ymir's strange metaphors, "but you shall not have him."

He wished Loki had not forced a meeting with Ymir. He wished he and Loki were back in their chamber, private, alone together. There he could perhaps find the words to address the subtle undercurrent in Loki's cool, poisonous proclamations.

_I am very wicked. I am dangerous and dark. Even Thor thinks so._

For that wasn't true. He'd never thought Loki irredeemably evil, never thought him anything more than foolhardy and misguided and deeply warped by all the lies and suffering Odin and Laufey had wrought on him. But he could not get out such bitter truths, let alone in the right words, with Banner standing there slack jawed and Ymir watching them so fixedly. 

"Speak plain, Great Ymir," he ordered instead, hoping to wrap things up with the great giant as quickly as possibly. 

"I'll speak plain," Loki said, still ruthless. "You're unbalanced? _You_?"

Ymir nodded, reaching for Loki with a nimbleness no creature of his size should have. Thor shoved Loki behind him again on instinct as Loki snarled, "At least you wrought it on yourself! You've given no thought, I'm sure, to what it's been like for me!"

Ymir stopped. His words dropped from his mouth like great boulders

"What it's been like for you?"

Loki shoved Thor off one more time, and stood shaking before Ymir, his eyes red-rimmed. 

"All my life," he said, "I've been tangled up and wicked and dark and cold. Full of tricks and shifts. Thor can tell you what I am, how twisted and unbalanced, thanks to _your winter_ —"

"Thor will say no such thing," Thor said, deeply troubled now.

Loki was tricky and tangled-up not because some foolish giant had pressed him full of too much ice magic when he'd been an infant. He was who he was because of all he'd been forced to survive, because he had found ways all his life to slip free from Laufey's cruelty, from Odin's. Even occasionally from the noose of Thor's expectations for him. 

_And, at your best, you've turned it to good_ , Thor thought, Thor wanted to say. But Ymir was shaking his great head and reaching for Loki again.

"So I will do you a favor by taking you back into myself—"

" _You will do me the favor I ask of you!_ " Loki said. "I have not suffered all my life to end it by _your_ devouring hand! You have said we are both of us unbalanced, both suffering. There is one way to fix this, Great Ymir, that will not harm either of us. Give me the heat that overtakes you. Give me the summer storm, the excess third of your flame."

"Can you withstand such a thing?" Ymir asked, the wonder at such a proposition clear in his booming voice. 

"What haven't I withstood?" Loki cried. He was holding Thor off with a hand now, actively keeping Thor from getting between him and Ymir as the ancient giant deliberated. 

"Loki," Thor pleaded with him. "Hold on. I would think on this a bit more."

Now Loki's plan was clear, or clearer. New Asgard needed a heat source, and this was how Loki sought to win it for them. But Thor couldn't shake his fear that such a thing might harm Loki. Ymir's flame was a consuming, horrible thing, and had felled the great giant for thousands of years. Thor had not cured the creature just to have such suffering transferred to Loki.

But when he reached for Loki again, Loki stepped back once, clear off of the edge of the cliffside. Thor gave a shout. For an instant, there was nothing but pure, unadulterated horror. Thor had failed. Loki was falling, past the cliff and catwalks, into the dank cave of Ymir.

Then Ymir lifted up a hand, and it became clear that he'd caught Loki by the collar. He dangled Loki before him, staring at him assessingly.

Thor swallowed hard and hefted his axe. He stepped back himself, towards the mouth of the tunnels, trying to gauge how best to get a running leap onto Ymir, and nearly tripped over _The Wicked Brother._ This, of course, reminded him that Banner was still about, and that Loki's original means of self-defense might also help them right now.

"Banner," Thor said to the little man, with a heavy heart. He stooped down and scooped up the book. "I'm very sorry, but we need your other self right about now."

"Uh, no you don't," said Banner. He pointed at Loki and Ymir, at how the giant was gently stroking the side of Loki's face with a massive finger. "He doesn't look like he wants to hurt Loki."

The great giant cradled Loki in his huge fingers, wisps of smoke enveloping his entire hand and blocking Loki from view. Thor gave a shout, but then the smoke receded. 

It was done. Ymir's errant sparks of flame were gone, his orange eyes banked to a cool yellow, and Loki, Loki was—

The same. Actually, entirely the same. He had not been set on fire. He had not been eaten. It was possible, if Thor squinted, that his skin was a little warmer, more of a purplish-blue than a greenish-blue, but perhaps it was only the wild light of the red cavern walls that made him seem so. 

Loki was now playing with flames, little bursts of fire that made him break into a wild, crazed smile.

"Well, this is a trick I've never done before," he allowed. "And I'm the god of tricks."

"You can be the god of fire now," his great-great-great-great-grand-progenitor told him, patting him lightly on the head with his free hand and setting Loki back on the cliff face. "Clever iceling. I like your little idea, for it serves us both well. Now go off with the Asgard-king, but come see me later, if you can. None of my children ever visit me, you know."

"See?" Banner managed, from where Thor had, Thor now realized with some dismay, thrown him against the cavern wall.

He hadn't meant to do that. It had just sort of happened, in his panic and worry over Loki. Banner called up a wry, self-deprecating little smile, as though there were no hard feelings between them.

Of course, half-a-second-later he morphed into a creature so furious that it took Thor, Loki, and Ymir working together to subdue him. 

-

After a very long fight that left everyone bruised, as well as several minutes of Thor soothing Banner back into his smaller self (this time they used the passage where Angrboda shoved Lulli's gentle grandmama down a flight of conveniently-placed stairs), they returned to New Asgard.

"Huh. You know all this winter-summer stuff is just a metaphor for two separate kinds of energy," Banner said, as they walked through the chilly fields. "Both seem to have thermal-kinetic and gravitational properties simultaneously—"

"We know, Banner. That's why it's magic," Thor told him offhandedly. He didn't pay much mind to Banner. Loki had been distractedly manipulating flames since they'd left Ymir's cavern, and though Thor had a hand on his back, he did not seem interested in looking at Thor. Thor wasn't sure that had ever happened before. Loki was always, always looking at him. Sometimes sidelong, sometimes furtively. But always like he could not fix on Thor hard enough. To be passed over now felt wrong, as though Thor had made a terrible misstep, one he might not be able to fix.

"Your reckless plan worked," he tried.

"It did, didn't it?" said Loki coolly.

"You don't truly think I think you _evil_ —"

"No, only that I'm something you want to pen in," Loki said, waspish. "Something you, after all your talk of trust, can never fully trust yourself."

"Is this a conversation between you two?" Banner put in. "Should I go? Because I don't know where to go. For that matter, I don't even know why I'm here."

"Like he said," Loki murmured. "You were insurance. The plan, before Thor rewrote it, was to use you to threaten Ymir into giving me a third of his flame."

Banner began waving his arms about, pointing from Thor to Loki with great affront.

"Oh you, you're a jerk!" he told Loki, as they neared New Asgard proper. "And you—you're also a jerk—"

"Me?" Thor said, although he did feel like a jerk. He could have handled this better, all of this. 

"He dragged me out of bed and promised me scientific marvels that could maybe get rid of the Hulk—"

"What?" Thor said.

"Sorry, yes, that was a lie," said Loki, not sounding remotely sorry.

"—and you threw me into a wall! And for what? Something you both could have handled with a simple conversation—"

"I was trying to converse with him!" Thor insisted. "I've been trying to get him to abandon his mad plan for a better one all day!"

"No, you've been telling me my plan must be completely mad, which isn't the same thing," Loki said.

But now Banner decided to calm himself down again, ever peculiar in how he receded from his rage.

"You know what? Never mind. I hope you guys work out your weird issues. You saved me from Sakaar, so maybe we're square. I dunno. It's fine. Nobody was hurt, anyway. Besides you two, from fighting the other guy. So it's fine."

"I don't know about that," came Thor's mother now. "They both got everyone out of bed for, it seems, absolutely no reason."

Frigga and the others were waiting at the edge of the fields. Nearly _all_ of the others: Brunnhilde, Sif, the new Valkyrie recruits, Sten, Thrud, and practically every Aesir of age to fight. Most of them had pulled on battle armor. All of them looked very confused.

"You said that Loki had been taken by Ymir and we would have to launch a full-scale war in his defense?" Frigga said, crossing her arms and staring from Thor to Thrud.

"I didn't say that," Thor said. 

Thrud now attempted to step behind her mother, but Sif caught her by the scruff of the neck.

"Thrud!" she said. "Did you lie? Who taught you to lie like that?" 

She threw a dark look at Loki like she thought she knew. Thrud, however, looked offended at the very suggestion that Loki could teach her anything she didn't already know.

"What do you mean who taught me?" Thrud said. "No one needed to teach me! I can come up with lies all on my own!"

Sif sighed.

"Right," she said. "No, that does make sense."

The rest of New Asgard, too, were rather used to Thrud's pranks, and so now they began to peel off, shaking their heads and muttering that they should have known. Loki now finally, finally looked at Thor.

"You will have to discipline her," he said. 

"Me?" Thor said.

"You're her father. She's been naughty," Loki said. Then he straightened up and cupped his hands over his mouth.

"New Asgard!" he cried, striding forward into the crowd. "Do not run off so quickly! I, Loki of Jotunheim, have singlehandedly saved you from utter destruction!"

The Aesir began to look at each other perplexedly, for it seemed many of them had thought as Thor had, and assumed they were not quite yet on the brink of utter destruction. This did not faze Loki, however. He crouched low, somehow managing to make the action theatrical, and put a hand to the soil. 

"What do you think, my queen?" he asked Frigga. "Perhaps your spell to charm the land?"

He held out his free hand to her, showing her how it glowed now with the heat he had taken from Ymir. Frigga approached it carefully, examining it.

"The spell will need to be a great deal more complex," she murmured. "We're not growing flowers now."

"No, but if we throw up a field, like so," Loki said, and lifted his hand from the soil to create a rather complex illusion, a glowing yellow plane that seemed to make sense to only him and Frigga.

"More like this," said the queen, and played with the illusion herself a bit, pulling it to and fro and dancing her fingers over it to make runic notations. "No, wait. It will need to stretch under all of our territory, and it should permit future adjustment."

Now those who understood this complex magic came forward, among them Sten and the other engineers, to toss out their own insights. Thor, however, felt himself somewhat at a loss. This had always been Loki and Frigga's realm, one into which he'd never successfully crossed, one which he'd even once assumed was rather boring and weak. But that had been the Thor of old. This Thor understood that his mother and Loki's magic was anything but that. And now he caught the general gist of what they aimed to do, which was sink the flame into the very bones of this land, weave it into the magic of New Asgard itself, but control it, too. Pin it here. Harness it to the needs of the Aesir and only the Aesir, so that Thor's people could control the temperature of their land without the excess heat bleeding off into Jotunheim above.

"Oh, I get it," Banner murmured, several minutes after Thor had gotten it. 

By now Thrud had come over to pull Thor down so she could sit on his lap. Brunnhilde and Sif, too, had joined them. 

"You should be in bed," Thor told his daughter, wrapping his arms around her.

"Is it my fault that I'm not?" Thrud demanded.

"Yes," said all four adults present, including Banner.

"Right, fair," said Thrud. "That's fair."

She made no move to go to bed. Instead, she settled in on her father's lap. In moments, several other naughty children who had woken to watch the warmaking joined them. Thor, assuming he'd be rather useless with the heat spell Loki and Frigga were devising, began to teach them all to split kitten-rabbits. Banner provided color commentary that had even Sif and Brunnhilde laughing, partly because most of it was deeply puzzled and questioned whether Banner truly existed anymore or whether he'd died and gone to, in his words, 'space viking Hulk heaven,' and Thor realized that he rather liked the mad little man, and looked forward to working with him once Banner learned all the normal names for basic concepts.

This pleasant idyll was soon interrupted, however, when Loki bore down on them, a black cloud in a feather cloak.

"Thor," he said impatiently. "You are the king. Come. You must work some of this."

"I'm terrible at fine magical control," Thor pointed out. They'd covered this.

Loki glowered at him. His face looked tight, like it did pain him to carry Ymir's flame, or pained him to have it ripped from him so soon. The winter had been with Loki so long that Loki had never noticed it. It had become simply a part of him, apparently the part Loki chose to blame for all his flaws. Had Ymir's flame begun to tangle itself up in him as well? How? He'd only had it for a few minutes.

"You are the _king_ ," Loki said again, with a word evoking the sort of king Odin had been, the sort of king who had pomp and grandeur woven into his every breath. "You must have a role in this, if only for the show of it."

The children _oohed_ and _aaahed_ and so did Banner. Sif and Brunnhilde merely exchanged raised eyebrows.

"And who are you to order around the king, then?" Brunnhilde said. "You've been here all of two minutes. We're just getting used to you."

She had a fair point. But it was rather undermined, Thor thought, by how readily she and Sif had jumped into battle armor to save Loki. Not to mention how the rest of their fair city had done the same. After all, New Asgard had long assumed Loki to be their savior. 

Perhaps that was what had motivated all this. Perhaps Loki had only wanted to finally prove that true.

Thor sighed and stood, wiping green magical paste on his trousers and letting it ball off into kitten-rabbits. Loki stooped down to grab a few. 

"He is my intended," Thor said. "And I suspect he'll order me around freely, though—"

_I don't need to listen to him, and I'll make no promises that I will_ , had been what he was going to say. But he was too busy looking at Loki, his fine-boned face and broad forehead, the sheen of sweat on his blue skin. The delicate curve of his wrist-bones as his fingers closed on raw magic. Loki, who had withstood so much. 

"He's my intended," Thor finished. 

"Is that what I agreed to, before the All-Winter?" Loki said, as he led Thor over to Frigga. "Not merely courtship or a romantic dalliance, a charming sort of live-in-fuck situation, but a promise for more?"

"No, not what you agreed to," Thor said, though he'd certainly proposed to Loki intending far more than a _charming live-in fuck situation_. "That's what you're showing with your actions now. That's how to take your measure, isn't it, brother?"

Loki flushed. He deposited Thor with his mother, with instructions to make more healing paste for all the magic users running themselves ragged. Frigga was tracing strange symbols into the dirt at the furthest edge of the fields.

"Can you see it, Thor?" she asked distractedly.

"See what?" Thor said.

She snapped her fingers and then Thor could. The little trails of magic — of energy — which spread from Loki to every single spell-worker in New Asgard. Ymir had dumped his power swiftly, easily, and perhaps that was the way to do it. This way seemed far more draining, and Thor suspected they were only doing it this way so that his mother and the others could take their time adjusting the climate of the kingdom in the manner they saw fit.

"I have to make this up to him," Thor admitted. "I know."

Frigga looked at him, puzzled.

"Is there something to make up?" she said. "You two seemed very comfortable the past two nights. I had to put up silencing spells all around your chamber."

Well, Thor could have done without knowing that. He decided he would tuck the thought of his mother hearing him have sex far, far away, where he would never have to think on it ever again. 

Then he admitted, "I thought him wicked. I believed he would do something terrible—"

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time," Frigga said, with a shrug.

Thor stared at her.

"Thor," she said gently, still largely focused on working a trail of Ymir's flame into the soil, "I'm a little wicked. Your father certainly was, as was Hela. You've been known to fly into terrible rages. Do you think us all so above wickedness that Loki's own propensity for chaos and poor planning wouldn't fit right in?"

"No, of course not," Thor said, and was surprised to find that this was true. Like his mother, he'd known Loki was theirs, was meant to be theirs, from the moment Loki had first come to them. Loki fit with them. That wasn't the trouble.

"I think I hurt him," he told Frigga. "He already thinks himself twisted and wrong, and I confirmed it. I told him he was a hero, for he _is_ , with how he rescued the children and faced the All-Winter, but then I turned around and accused him of wanting to steal Ymir's winters. And he did have a terrible plan, a plan to attack Ymir, but his aim was greater than I gave him credit for, mother."

Frigga shrugged again.

"So he broadens your definitions of heroism. That won't kill you, Thor. And in any case, don't you do the same to him?"

Thor honestly didn't know. Compared to Loki, he was straightforward and steady. He couldn't ever imagine being the sort of creature that reworked Loki's conceptions of what was possible. This was why it had felt right, for Thor to offer Loki a home and for Thor to do the work of courting Loki and for Thor to press gift upon gift on him, all while Loki took it as his due. Loki didn't need to do more than that, didn't need complex plots or more sacrifice. Loki expanded Thor's world merely by existing in it.

Frigga put a muddy hand on Thor's shoulder.

"Talk to him, when this is over," she advised. "You will sort this out. You've managed worse. At this point I think the two of you fight every three days, Thor, and you always get past it."

Then she made a face.

"And pin back this bit of hair that's in my face, will you?" she said. "I don't want to get mud on it."

-

Warmth and light slowly banked New Asgard, settled into every sheaf of wheat, every rustic corner of every granary, every curving metal fountain and stone lane. It wasn't the overpowering light that had bled from Ymir, but something softer and kinder, radiating from the ground itself, with strange little side effects. New flowers, blue-black and birdlike, beat their way up through the ground and soon coated all of Sten's house. The snakes that crept through the mushroom forests acquired newer, brighter scale patterns. The green corn fields closest to the Ironwood crossing very inexplicably turned purple. Golden weasels began to poke their snouts up through the soil, making the queen note that there was no solution that was perfect, and it was possible that, in their rush to create a realm whose temperature their best mages could manipulate at will, they had also created a future pest problem.

Thor approached Loki feeling penitent still. But Loki was the one sitting bent over by the main fountain, the one whose shoulders were slumped with exhaustion or with some deeper sense of defeat. Thor could not tell.

"Now you can scold me," he told Thor, when he caught sight of him.

"Why would I scold you?" Thor said. "You saved us. Again."

"Saved New Asgard," Loki allowed, and here he grinned like being thought a savior was powerful enough to revive some of the mischief he had in him. The grin soon bled away, however.

"Saved New Asgard, but ruined us," Loki said. "Things were perfect between you and I for a moment, weren't they? And now they're not."

It was here that Thor became grateful for his mother's words, for his mother's calm. He could take on a bit of that calm when necessary. When he needed it to fix this.

"You didn't ruin things. We had a fight. We have one every few days, anyway. Now it's time to come back from it."

"How?" Loki said. "Do I get kidnapped? Do you get threatened with death? We don't come back from things, you and I. We just tumble into worse things, and then realize we still need each other."

This wasn't wrong. Still, Thor said, "Now there won't be worse things. No more stupid rage or petty tricks. Now we'll — we'll go for a walk."

"A walk?" Loki said. "You don't mean another sentimental little chat?"

"I mean a walk," Thor said, though it was possible he also meant that other thing.

He let Loki pick where, and Loki decided they would go towards the Ironwood, to see the furthest reaches of the great spell-working. The crossing into that part of the Lands Below was very changed, warm and banked in light until they reached the great cavern beneath the Jotunheim Ocean, where all was truly winter. There their breath froze into jeweled crystals, and Loki conjured up several warm layers for a grateful Thor. His feather-cloak seemed to be enough to cover him, though, for he was, after all, the third winter.

"Let's go further," Loki said. "There will be true, pure winter in the Ironwood now. And you've never seen it, I think. For that matter, I've never seen it."

So they crossed the frozen marsh, with its paths bordered by snow-fungi. Then they were in the Ironwood proper, the ugly caves and tunnels of ore which had landed Thor in such terrible trouble, not more than a few months ago. That seemed years ago, for Loki had not been back then. And these caves were ugly no more. Loki was right when he said that true winter had descended, for the chill in the air was a palpable thing, and the strange underground frost on the walls cast every twisting seam in white-blue light.

"This is much lovelier than it was when I—" Loki began. Something in his face crumpled. "Well. Never mind."

When he'd been a child, unwanted and ill-cared for. Seeking refuge in this place. 

_Never again,_ Thor wanted to say. _Never again will you be so poorly-treated. Never again will you be forced into the shadows. Never again shall I let you be harmed, do you understand? That was all I meant, when I banned you from seeing Ymir. That I would not treat you as my father and Laufey did._

But such an expression of honesty would be excruciating for Loki. Loki seemed to need to be tied up for that sort of thing. So instead Thor said, "I'm glad you involved yourself in New Asgard's affairs, brother. Your aims were true, and in the end you did right."

Loki perhaps thought it wasn't obvious, how such compliments shook him at his core. But it was very obvious. It was a slight shift behind his eyes, like Thor had reached into his mind and lit a candle there, a soft bit of brightness.

"You had no way of knowing what I meant," he allowed, after a few moments. "And when I made Helblindi give you these lands, it was only meant as a trick. So I wanted to give you a real gift, a planned gift. You'd made me so happy. You and your mother, and the children, and..."

He trailed off, like indulging in such emotions pained him. Thor pulled him off to a snowy rock ledge and spread one of his layers on it so they could sit. Loki let him guide him into place there, next to each other, knees pressed together like they were boys again.

"I would make you happy for every moment of the rest of my life, if I could," Thor told him then, reaching for his hand. Loki's fingers were freezing cold, no longer flame-touched or god-touched, but this was the hand Thor wanted to grasp now. This one.

Loki swallowed.

"I know," he said. "I can't understand it for the life of me, but I know. And I want to be worthy of that, Thor. That's why I ruined things by running off to steal some flame from Ymir."

"What is this business of ruining you keep bringing up?" Thor demanded. "It's like all your talk of belonging, or using. Or worse: like my bouts of rage. Perhaps we would fight less, brother, if we looked at our mistakes as what they are: clumsy attempts to love each other in the way we think is best."

Loki let out a startled laugh.

"That was almost wise, Asgard-king," he teased.

"I'm very wise," Thor informed him. He brought Loki's cold hand to his own lap and held it there for a moment, all the winter in Thor's own hands, the howling wind, the tricky calm at the center of a blizzard.

"You suit New Asgard very well," he told Loki, meaning, of course, _you suit me very well_. But what he said was the truth, too. 

"You have given my kingdom life twice now," he continued. "You're good with the children. You're good with me. You challenge me, Loki. You let me challenge you, amend your wild plans where necessary. I think we're strong together. And I meant it, when I said I wanted to be your home."

He snuck a look at Loki's face and was pleased to see that little candle of shock still burning. He wasn't sure it would be, wasn't sure Loki wouldn't feel trapped by these words instead. It had only been a few days now, since Thor had declared his intentions before all Jotunheim. And Thor had been taken to task for this sort of thing before, by Sif and by his mother. He had a tendency to rush into marriage, forgetting that his prospective brides often had to take on quite a bit. Children. Co-rulership of New Asgard. That sort of thing. 

But he thought Loki was perhaps the right person for all that. Loki had always been the right person for all that.

"I was wrong to say you shouldn't concern yourself with my kingdom. I would like you to concern yourself with it. I would like you in every part of my life, Loki—"

Oh, but this wouldn't do. Loki was crying, two near-imperceptible tears at the corners of his eyes. Thor moved on instinct, pulling him in and running his hands through his soft dark hair.

"I meant what I told Ymir," Loki said, shaking his head. "I'm tangled, a trickster—"

"Do you think I don't know that?" Thor said. "I know. But if you're as unbalanced as you say, brother, as cold and dark as you claim to be, then let me balance you. I'll be the summer storm you need, the light. Did I not promise that already?"

Loki laughed against him, or perhaps sobbed. It was hard to tell, and it made Thor frown and press kisses to his ears, try to tip up his chin so he could get a look at him. Loki refused to be tipped up.

"Yes, of course. You always have to be the golden one," he said instead, into Thor's chest, as though Thor was supposed to know what he meant by 'golden.'

But then perhaps Thor did know. It wasn't hard to figure it out, after Loki had written out all his fantasies with Thor, after Loki's sporadic and forceful bursts of envy, after his sobbing submission in the bedroom. After he'd bared every vulnerability to save Thor, not once but multiple times now. That Loki must love him was clear, but Loki treated love like a painful little wound he both cherished and refused to draw too much attention to. Thor would always have to be the one to draw their affection out into the open. That was fine. Thor could do that. 

"We suit each other," Thor told him now, shaking him a bit. "That's what I mean. I mean that I worship you, foolish. And I'm asking you, properly, not to be mine or belong to me or be used by me or whatever your mind makes of my love for you, but to marry me. To rule with me, my equal _and_ my beloved. Here—"

Thor kissed him. His lips were cold, then very warm indeed, like the press of Thor's mouth on his left him reeling and unable to decide just what he wanted to be right now, fire or ice. Loki might have gifted Ymir's flame to the Aesir, but he was more than just winter, even without the flame. 

"I worship you," Thor told him again, when they broke off. They were too close to what Thor wanted for Thor to think of backing down, so he plowed forward, secure that he could make Loki see reason. 

"It is a lot, I know, but marriage need not be a burden. And we can stipulate to all sorts of things! I learned about this after marrying Jarnsaxa, you see. We could have created a sort of prenuptial agreement. We didn't, more's the pity, but you and I can do it for ourselves, this time. Whatever you like can go in the agreement. If you don't want to be burdened with the children, or—"

"I _love_ the children!" Loki snarled.

Then he was pressing kisses to the hollow beneath Thor's missing eye, to Thor's scarred knuckles. To strange corners of Thor Thor hardly thought about, like Loki appreciated every last one.

"Thor, I love the children." he said, wiping at his face with the back of a hand. "I love them. I do. I do—"

"They're yours, we're yours," Thor said immediately. "I'm yours. Alright, my winter? Shall we do this?"

He held out his arms, and was pleased when Loki, with a great wondering exhale, settled into them. Despite the chill, the frost-patterns all around them, Thor felt warm from toe to tip. 

"Let's do it," Loki said, curling his fingers around Thor's cloak, pressing his cheek to Thor's cheek. "Let's be married, then. It can't be worse than any of my other plans."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: epilogue! Finally.


	21. Epilogue

The legend of Prince Loki and the Asgard-King would only grow from there on out. For though Loki was small, he was a piece of the very winter. Knowing his duty to his realm, he traded himself to cruel Thor for the safety of all Jotunheim. And it did not escape Jotunheim that Loki's new master paraded him before the court, made him read an illicit, thrilling account of what were clearly Thor's own sordid plans for the prince. 

Was Thor not the evil Angrboda? Was Loki not the innocent Lulli?

Though the year of Winter's Return (for this was what it would be called in the history books) was a triumphant year for Jotunheim, another glorious year in the rule of King Helblindi the Emancipator, there was an undercurrent of deep sadness for the giants. For their little sacrifice, tragic Prince Loki, belonged once again to the Aesir. And the Asgard-King could call it marriage all he liked. But how could that be a proper marriage? How could Prince Loki ever truly be happy, wedding a man who consorted with vicious green beasts and stole flame from Ymir himself?

Yet this was what made it a legend. The evil king did make Prince Loki happy. Or perhaps Loki made _Thor_ happy, for after the marriage the giants saw a great change in him. Thor the wicked, the deceiver, the vile Odinson of the Lands Below, spent most of the next century sheltering the weakest and smallest of the giants. He took Ymir's excess flame, yes, but he also worked with Great Ymir to restore Jotunheim's perfect cold, then traveled to Midgard and assisted them with their own, similar troubles. He even went with Prince Loki to Vanaheim, where they talked Thor's warlike cousins into finally making peace with the dark elves.

This meant that most of the surface giants, coming upon the co-king of New Asgard, couldn't help but say, a little gravely, things like: __

_You've had a great impact on him, little winter._

Or

_Your compassionate sacrifice has tamed a most untamable beast._

Or 

_Who knew that such a vicious god-king could be made gentle, and by such a meek and humble creature as you?_

At first, alarmingly, the little prince would snap, "Tame him? Make him gentle? I'm a god myself, a god of chaos, mischief, devouring cold, and fire! I make nothing and no one gentle!"

But then the giants would murmur sweet, soothing things to him, and remark that in his condition it was perhaps to be expected that he was on edge. For the Norns had blessed Prince Loki for his troubles, blessed him mightily. He spent the first few decades of his marriage heavy with child.

-

This was, needless to say, something of an inconvenience, even if he and Thor brought it on themselves. Thor tended to forget that that Loki didn't plan ahead enough to cast silencing spells, let alone contraceptive ones. Loki tended to forget that Thor was a god of fertility. Fertility, thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, breastplates, and sweatshirts.

"Sweatshirts?" Loki said faintly, that first morning, not long after Thor's proposal in the Ironwood. He'd woken with unendurable nausea and then Frigga, with a cry of surprised joy, had promptly proclaimed him blessed with the promise of new life. Right at the breakfast table. She'd tried to say it quietly, of course, but Thrud had overheard and screamed it to all the rest of the hall. 

A great deal of cheering commenced, and more than one Aesir bounded up to clap their king on the back. Thor took this all in stride. This would be his third, after all. But since it would be Loki's first, Loki spent the next few minutes quietly panicking as Sif and Brunnhilde pointed out the vast spectrum of Thor's powers and how this had likely contributed to Loki's current situation.

"Sweatshirts," he said again, after a few minutes.

"Those first few years after the fall of Asgard were rough," Sif explained. "To be honest, that's why I eventually had to ask for a divorce. Never could abide a man in a sweatshirt, plus by then I'd fallen in love with this one."

She quirked a thumb at her wife. Brunnhilde, meanwhile, was regarding Loki carefully.

"If you don't want it, Thor won't mind," said the head Valkyrie. "Well. He might mind. But he won't make a thing of it. Sif didn't want a child for the first fifty years—"

"I was waiting it out," Sif said, with a sigh. "Hoping things would be perfect in the end. But just. The _sweatshirts_."

"At least he's not the god of black eyeliner," Brunnhilde told her. "That's his hag of a sister."

"Oh no, that's Odin," Frigga said. "There was a period in his two hundreds, and, well. The less said about his teenage warlord-conqueror aesthetic, the better. But Brunnhilde is right, darling. We all get excited over these things, for after the loss of old Asgard every child has seemed a gift. But no one here will judge you if you choose to put children off a bit."

Indeed, the parallel conversation Thor was holding with Sten and Saga and several of the others seemed to confirm this, for Thrud kept interrupting their discussion of a potential heir to both Asgard and Jotunheim to ask, "Why isn't anyone asking me how _I_ feel about it? Why doesn't anyone care what _I_ want?" to which Thor was saying, plainly, "Because it's what Loki wants that matters."

"Stuff," Thrud said. "Well, even if no one's asking, I want the baby to be sort of blueish-pink, at least nine feet tall, and very vicious, with claws and strong teeth."

"Only if Loki likes," Thor said dismissively, as though all of these requests made an equal amount of sense.

"Oki," Magni agreed, from Frigga's arms.

Loki stared down at his stomach. For much of his life, it had been a serviceable stomach. He cared for it like he cared for the rest of his body, which was to say not a great deal, but then he could always shift it about into something better or cover it up with an illusion. But now it announced itself as a purposeful, obtrusive kind of thing. It would swell soon, balloon up—or, no. No. It was his womb that would do that. 

Now he wasn't even sure. How could he have an actual child with Thor when he was over here unsure of his own anatomy? How could he have a child with anyone? He was Loki, the prince of shifts and tricks.

"What if it's a snake or a frog or something?" he blurted out.

Thrud gasped delightedly. 

"Do you think it will be?" she said. "I hope it is! I hope it's both!"

"Gundr," Magni said reproachfully, casting his vote for snake. 

"Frog might be nice," said Sten, bizarrely. "Good luck, frogs."

But Thor now rose and came to Loki, winding his arms about him.

"It can be whatever you like, or not be at all," said Thor, firm. "You decide, Loki."

"I'd like to get married first," Loki hedged. 

He'd like to crawl back into his and Thor's bed, the very bed where Thor had eaten him out and made him see stars this morning, and perhaps never resurface. He was pregnant. Him. _Loki_.

Banner appeared at the table, having overslept.

"What?" he said. "Loki's pregnant? _What_?"

He sat and stared around at all the Aesir, at the runt giants who had begun to arrive from the surface, at the blue-skinned prince sitting next to him, at Thrud.

"Pregnant with what?" he asked, after a second. "I mean, I hate that I have to ask that, but. You know. Pregnant with what?"

"Don't worry," Loki said. "I'm asking too."

It turned out not to be a frog or snake, to the consternation of Sten and the children. Instead it was a wizened, pale blue little creature, pink at the elbows, which Thor told him Magni had been as well, and extremely ugly overall. Certainly much uglier than Thrud or Magni. Still, Loki cried when Frigga put it in his arms, for he loved it already. He counted out ten fingers and ten toes, just to be sure, and checked to make sure it didn't have a tail. It didn't. It was dual-gendered, though, slightly more Jotunn than Aesir.

"What are we calling him?" Thrud demanded.

"Modi," Loki said.

"Well, I'm calling him Crow the Cobra," Thrud said.

"I wouldn't expect any less," said Loki, and as the babe cried he brought it to his swollen breast, still marveling at it. Already he was forgetting the agonizing hours he had spent delivering Modi, screaming blue murder at Thor and even at Frigga. Instead he traced Modi's fine, dark hair and felt a pinprick of aching relief as the child began to suckle. It was moments like these that let Loki see why it was Thor seemed so obsessive about holding Loki himself in his arms. Loki had never been one for holding, but to clasp Modi was like clasping Magni, like stooping down and kissing Thrud. It was being permitted to touch, for an instant, all the raw, wonderful power of new magic.

Little wonder, then, that after this Thor knocked him up twice more.

 _What is wrong with me?_ Loki thought, when he learned little Vali was coming. _I cannot possibly be so stupid as to keep forgetting contraception. I cannot_ like _being pregnant._

But he did. Oh, he did. He liked the way Thor fussed over him, liked how Frigga would freely pull him into her arms and stroke his hair while she quizzed him on how well he was feeling that day. It wasn't that Loki's family didn't care for him with alarming gentleness at the best of times, but more that it took becoming pregnant a few times for the gentleness to make sense, for Loki to stop feeling as though the Norns had made a mistake, in making this his life now. 

And he liked, too, the way Thrud eventually dropped the 'uncle' before Loki's name, and how Magni babbled cheerfully at his stomach. He even liked the faces Sif and Brunnhilde would make, when he had bizarre cravings, and how they let him laze about when he was with child, bullied away anyone who tried to make him help with a hunt or set a table.

He even liked the little spats before bedtime when Thor wanted to be disarmingly careful and Loki wanted him a little rougher, despite the baby. Those were playful fights, anyway. Thor could be both at once, and that was something Loki had never anticipated, how no matter what Thor was doing to him, he could leave Loki feeling breathless and beloved. There was a moment when he first became pregnant when he worried that Thor could not like him as before, could not find pleasure in him. Loki's ungainly body became worse, after all, chest swelling, belly big enough to obscure his own sight of his cunt and cock, nipples going puffy and dusky and prominent. But Thor seemed to enjoy him even more, seemed to particularly thrill at having Loki on his hands and knees, his stomach swaying below him as Thor took him apart with fingers, mouth, and cock.

He'd planned, once, to seduce Thor thoroughly. He was quite sure he'd planned that. But now that he had Thor, Loki discovered that he himself was fundamentally lazy, and that it was ever so much nicer when Thor played the seducer, put in all the work, while all Loki had to do was show up ready to fuck and be ordered about. Even when he was the one taking Thor, he made Thor do the work, and Thor seemed to prefer it that way. On more than one memorable night when Loki was pregnant with Narsi, he'd have Loki lie back while Thor put a hand on the headboard and lowered himself onto Loki's straining cock, careful of the baby.

"You're too close for me to take you in any hole, brother," he'd tell Loki. "I couldn't forgive myself if I harmed you or the child."

 _Yes, that's why we're doing this,_ Loki would want to say wryly. _Not because you're as hungry for my cock as I am for yours._

But he could rarely form the words. Thor always took Loki fully, to the hilt, and Norns, the tightness, the _heat_. Loki would fist his hands in the pillows and breathe out hard, moaning, as Thor tormented him. Through his haze pf pleasure, he'd hope that Thor wouldn't be squeamish about feeding him his cock later, or perhaps sucking on his milk-swollen breasts, once Loki had come inside him and he'd come on Loki's cock. 

But he'd leave that up to Thor. He'd give himself over to Thor saying sweet things to him and pressing kisses to his belly as he rode Loki.

"Who's your home, my winter?" Thor would demand. "Who?"

"You," Loki would sob, as he came, and as a reward after this Thor _would_ suckle him, and let Loki suckle him back, too.

So it was only to be expected, in the end, that Loki became a father of five. At five, even he had to put a stop to it. By then Thrud was growing into an adventurous adolescent, forever off hunting in the ice wastes or merrily stabbing her enemies in duels; and Magni needed someone to train him up in conjuring magic, which he'd taken a profound interest in. Vali had begun walking and getting into trouble, and little Narsi was born an even greater complainer than Magni had been. Truth be told, all five of the children required attention, demanded to be spoiled rotten (as Loki understood it, he was the spoiling parent and Thor the disciplinarian, though it was possible no one ever told Thor this as Thor seemed to have no inclination towards discipline whatsoever), so Loki began to feel that adding a sixth was perhaps not fair to any of them.

Modi might have born it well. Modi was polite, pleasant, dutiful, selfless, generous, and completely violence-averse. People generally wondered if Modi was in fact a child of the line of Odin. But the others — for their sake, Loki finally called it quits and dug up an infertility spell.

For himself. Not for Thor. It never would have taken on Thor.

By this point, however, fifty or so years had passed, and great change had taken hold of Jotunheim. New Asgard's people lived with and freely married giants, the runt-giants who Thor had welcomed in the year of Winter's Return. The All-Winter had been replaced by a new law court run by Great Ymir himself, a giant of surprising fairness and boundless patience, who finally ventured out of the core to live among his children, as they almost never came down to visit him. Helblindi was even married to a former lieutenant of Thrym's in order to broker peace between their two warring clans. Instead of a honeymoon, he'd thrown a wild party with the Valkyries. Quite a lot of flip cup had been played.

And Thor had become a fine king, the greatest king any realm had ever known, Loki felt. He'd been a good king before, of course. But after his third marriage, Loki and Frigga had conspired to teach him greater control of his magic, so that he might help teach his own children and control his kingdom, which after all was a truly magical place, a place laced with the golden-warm power of Ymir. And Thor had taken on more diplomatic duties, working openly now with Helblindi's court to periodically rework the settlement treaty. These days, Queen Frigga did not handle such important deliberations. Thor did. Thor was the Aesir the giants faced, when their two lands needed to determine fair shares of resources, put prices to the green corn harvest, or debate other serious topics of that nature. 

This was just as well for Frigga. She'd shocked both Loki and Thor one day, not long after Modi's birth, when she'd declared that she intended to date plain, silly little Bruce Banner, and perhaps even follow him back to his native Midgard.

" _Him_?" Loki had shrieked. "You can't! My Queen, you are so far above him, so excellent a woman—"

"I told you to call me mother," Frigga had said dismissively. "And I most certainly am not. I'm rather too old for him, if we're being honest. But I like him. Odin was always after power, but Bruce would rip out his power and destroy it utterly, if he could. I suppose having to deal with the Hulk won't be too fun, but Bruce is worth it, I think. He has seven Ph.D.s, you know."

And after that she spent a distressing amount of time in retirement on Midgard, though she returned often to see her sons and grandchildren.

This left Loki and Thor to handle diplomacy, and between them they just about managed it. Though sometimes they couldn't help but squabble with Jotunheim's chief negotiator. Byleistr, sadly, would never be an easy giant to deal with. 

"What do you mean, you don't recognize New Asgard's giants as giants?" Thor asked dangerously one day, after all the critical questions of harvest and land boundaries and iron had been handled. 

"New Asgard is not merely your tenant, brother mine. It is a part of Jotunheim in its own right," Loki put in.

The words were smooth and correct, but their delivery was snappish. Jotunheim and New Asgard had been revisiting the settlement treaty for several hours now, and now that all the major issues had been settled to mutual satisfaction, Byleistr became intractable about according the runts proper giant status.

Byleistr's marriage to Saga, who sat beside him at the deliberation table, was supposed to have improved him. Frigga had introduced them. Saga had seemed Byleistr's type, and Byleistr was most assuredly Saga's, and having two Princes of Jotunheim tied securely to New Asgard had enabled the two nations to settle into companionable peace. Moreover, Loki's new sister-in-law had proven a great ally when the runts had first needed resettling, for she had a genuine, if somewhat perverse, affection for giants on the whole.

But today Saga retreated from the conversation. Today she was as inattentive as the slumbering King Helblindi. She was engrossed in _The Wicked Brother's Equine Romance,_ the latest tale to come out of En Dwi's new publishing empire.

 _The Wicked Brother's Secret Dye Job_ , in which Angrboda revealed himself to be a shapeshifting brunette, had been bad enough. _The Wicked Brother's Hidden Daughter_ , which had suggested that Angrboda had birthed the goddess of death while being held hostage by a foreign king, had similarly piqued Loki's ire. But even those were not quite so bad as this latest one, wherein Angrboda got fucked by a horse. 

"Oh, he's very flexible," Saga murmured now, too low for anyone but Byleistr and Loki and Thor to hear. "And there are diagrams—"

"It's not an instruction manual!" Loki said, startling the others at the table: the various clan representatives, the clerks, his and Thor's own Aesir-in-waiting. They all began to make concerned noises, as Thor ran a comforting knuckle across the back of Loki's hand. 

Saga merely rolled her eyes and appealed to her own husband with a look. 

"Maybe it's not one for _you_ ," said Byleistr.

His and Saga's look became superior. It did not escape Loki that these days Byleistr fancied himself the family's dashing rebel. He and Saga liked to throw wild parties that put Sakaarian orgies to shame. Sten bragged about them often, something which often led to Loki attempting to banish Sten (Thor would never agree, sadly).

Now Royal Consort Gangji put a large hand gently on the arm of Loki's chair, one large knuckle stopping just short of grazing Loki's arm. No giant dared touch Loki, for fear of what they believed cruel King Thor would do to them, so Gangji kept a wary eye on the Asgard-king as he addressed Loki.

"You seem distressed, dear Prince. You are not with child again?"

"Norns, no. I already have too many," Loki said.

The children, thankfully, were all visiting great-great-great-great-grand-progenitor Ymir today. Ymir doted on them. 

"If I'm distressed," Loki said, "it is because you fail to give the giants of New Asgard their due as dual citizens—"

"They do not even live among us, and they were only slaves and runts when they did," Byleistr said.

"So too was I, once!" Loki snapped. 

Several of the giants around the table shifted uncomfortably now, not meeting his eyes.

"And they do live among you," Thor put in. "New Asgard and Jotunheim are separate nations, yes, but we are among you. We are your brothers and sisters now, committed to sharing and protecting your realm. Why, then, are our giants harassed so, treated as clan-less outsiders, when they visit the surface? They _are_ a clan, the clan of the Lands Below."

"But they do not have a clan leader," Gangji pointed out.

Loki felt himself puffing up, and didn't even care.

"They most certainly do!" he snapped.

"Aye, Loki's the clan leader, as he's a giant and one of their kings," Helblindi said now, rousing himself long enough to catch the tail-end of the conversation. "Are we still talking about this? Byleistr only brought it up to annoy Loki. Let the runts have their due, and that is that."

Then he closed his eyes again, as Loki said, rather severely, "Thank you, Helblindi."

Byleistr rolled his eyes, but didn't contradict either of his brothers, and after a few muttered grumbles the other giants fell in line. The Clan of the Lands Below was formally acknowledged and added to the treaty, and then there was the customary round of celebratory flip cup to celebrate the latest ratification, and then Loki and Thor could finally, blessedly, pick up the children and head home.

But before they made it out of the palace, they ran into Jarnsaxa.

Thor had eventually let him see Magni on weekends, feeling that this was only fair to Magni. Jarnsaxa had not ever given Thor any thanks for this. In fact, though Jarnsaxa grew more and more beautiful with every passing year, his abhorrent personality regrettably saw no similar improvement. 

Now he pretended he didn't even see them, coolly looking past them.

Loki decided this would not stand.

"Free of your house arrest already, Jarnsaxa?" he called out. "And it only took fifty years."

Jarnsaxa flushed purple.

"You're less plump than the last time I saw you, Prince Loki."

"I was _pregnant_ ," Loki said. Thor was now trying to pull him away, possibly because he now had his nails curved into claws. Ever since Jarnsaxa had let Thrym try to hit Thrud, Jarnsaxa had had this effect on Loki. It was freeing, really. He no longer had to pretend to like the little twit.

"Yes, enjoy rolling around with the babies," said Jarnsaxa, as though one of those babies wasn't his own child. "I, meanwhile, will be delighting myself in every way possible on a pleasure trip. King Helblindi has indicated that he will grant me traveling privileges, you see."

"Why in all the realms is he doing that?" Loki snapped, but Thor spoke over him now.

"Where are you going, Jarnsaxa?" 

Thor was forever polite with Jarnsaxa. He knew it annoyed Jarnsaxa. Loki ran his nails down Thor's arm appreciatively now, as Jarnsaxa gritted his teeth until they formed a radiant smile.

"A marvelous place, a land of luxury, thrill, and bliss untold," Jarnsaxa said. "I'm to be feted as champion and chief consort there, for their leader heard of my beauty and wit, my charm and grace. And _such_ a perfect place it is, honestly. But I'm sure you've never heard about it. It's called Sakaar."

"Sakaar?" Thor managed.

"Sakaar," said Jarnsaxa. 

"Sakaar?" Loki said

"Yes, I said that. It's called Sakaar," said Jarnsaxa.

Thor, to his credit, tried to dissuade Jarnsaxa from his travel plans. Loki, by contrast, laughed all the way to Ymir's hall. 

"It suits him perfectly," Loki said, with petty glee. "He's a regular Angrboda, after all. Arrogant, vicious, savage—"

"Exactly. He might like it," Thor pointed out. "If ever anyone was born to be a vicious high consort of the Sakaarian arena, it's Jarnsaxa."

Loki stopped laughing.

No. _No_. That was simply too good a fate for Jarnsaxa, and he said so.

"What do I care what fate he gets?" Thor said. "I have my people, my children, and you. Jarnsaxa doesn't wake with you in his arms, and he doesn't get to spend hours kissing your hands. Jarnsaxa doesn't get to find you fussing over Narsi or Vali or Modu, or come home to find you've conjured Magni and Thrud another fifty-foot snake. Jarnsaxa will always be poor compared to what we have, brother."

And Loki felt great warmth spread through him. 

Thor was right. Jarnsaxa might find a place equal to his savagery, cruelty, and innate drama, and that was far too good a fate for him, but what did it matter? Jarnsaxa did not have Thor. Loki had Thor. Woke to Thor, worked alongside Thor, fell asleep in Thor's arms. And Thor, he had Loki. Lived with Loki, ruled with Loki, drove Loki mad with pleasure and affection. 

They would always have the better end of the bargain.

Thor smiled at him now, casting this corner of the realm in light, for all that Jotunheim had no sun. Loki found himself laughing delightedly, unable to help the happiness that spread through him in response. And when the children clustered about them and demanded to know what was so funny, Loki didn't tell them. Neither did Thor. They loved the children, they did, but there were some wordless joys that made sense to the two of them alone, that defied explanation and so were best kept between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's one silly bonus scene I may post on Monday, if I can get it to line up with the rest of the fic. <3


	22. Post-credits Scene

After Thor proposed, but before he and Loki were actually wedded, Thor realized that one important member of his family was missing. Perhaps he'd been missing the whole time. He approached his mother about this. 

Frigga was in the sitting room, putting the final touches on her tapestry. All she said was, "Yes, well, he was concerned when Loki appeared. I didn't understand why at the time, but now I expect he must have known that Loki didn't give us New Asgard in good faith. Possibly he even knew Loki was one of the Ancient Winters. He certainly knew why Loki was banished, and he might have known of Loki's dealings on Svartalfheim and Vanaheim, and maybe even that Loki wrote _The Wicked Brother_."

"Knew all that?" Thor said. "And didn't tell us? That's not like him."

"It's very like him," Frigga insisted. "He can't tell us everything. Could you imagine if he ran about telling everyone everything he sees all the time? There wouldn't be enough hours in the day."

"But where's he gone?" Thor said. "I thought he was watching over New Asgard all along, mother, but now I see he's not at his post."

Frigga paused in her work, considering.

"He said something about two possible paths, and went off to speak to Brunnhilde for a bit," she said. "So I expect he's with the Norns."

And indeed, that was precisely where Thor found Heimdall. At the well of fate, surrounded by three great beings that were not so large as Ymir, but were just as unsettling as the old giant. All three had his dark blue skin. Urd, Thor supposed, must be the one with cataract-yellow eyes, Verdandi the one with pale eyes of orange, and Skuld with the bright red eyes of a young giant. 

The three goddesses were deep in conversation with Heimdall, who appeared to have their bucket. He kept holding it out to them and then drawing back to himself, considering, making the three goddesses hiss in frustration.

"Will you give us our bucket so that we might tend to the world tree already, watchman?" cried the one Thor thought must be Urd. 

"Just one more thing," Heimdall murmured. 

"One more thing, one more thing!" snapped perhaps-Verdandi. "It has been one more thing for weeks now!"

"That long?" Heimdall said.

"We've agreed to drop the path where the great snake murders your king," said Skuld irritably, "and the one where one of the youngest babes tears the other limb from limb. We've agreed that Loki shall not succumb to madness or murder, and that you shall not have to kill him, nor him you—"

"All that wintry cold inside him, and for nothing," sighed Verdandi. "And he was _just_ the path by which we might bring more ruin to the line of Odin."

"What's going on here?" Thor put in now. "Why do you speak of Loki in this way?"

"My king," Heimdall said turning to him. Now Verdandi lunged for the bucket, but Heimdall was too quick for her, drawing back and holding her off with an arm.

"Fair's fair, great goddess," Heimdall said. "You know you must bargain with whoever holds your bucket."

"You haven't told us what you'll give us!" cried Urd now, stamping her large foot. "The Valkyries gave us their afterlife for the chance to do Odin an ill turn, and the little winter was foolish enough to inadvertently sacrifice six hundred years of happiness to save his queen. But you, you ask for far more than they did, and yet offer us nothing!"

"I was waiting for him," Heimdall said, jerking his chin at Thor. "He's the one you really want, isn't he?"

Three large, horrible pairs of eyes fixed now on Thor. But Thor had been before the All-Winter, so he knew by now how to manage this.

He put his hands on his hips and traced a toe in the sand at the base of the well, thinking.

"I couldn't possibly give it to you, no," he decided.

"What?" demanded Urd. "What couldn't you give us?"

"It's too great," said Thor. "Too marvelous. I cherish it above all things. I've spent so much time siphoning my power off there, you see."

Verdandi's thick, shapely blue arms scrabbled for her sisters.

"Where?" she shrieked. "Where? You don't mean to a land of the dead?"

"Oh, but I just can't give it up," Thor said, getting really into the swing of things. "My wondrous Bilskirnir. Greatest of places! Most magnificent of halls!"

"We'll give you and the watchman anything," Skuld decided. "Anything at all, if you offer us your Bilskirnir. If you let us finally, finally into the halls of the dead, so that not even Odin can wriggle away from our designs!"

"I _couldn't_ ," Thor said, trying not to look at Heimdall, for if he looked at Heimdall he was sure to burst out laughing. He tried to consider how long it might take for him to build a Bilskirnir.

"It's just so amazing," he decided. "It has five hundred and forty rooms, you know. And every one just so...so beautiful. I couldn't possibly trade it away."

"We will give you eternal happiness for you and your loved ones!" shrieked Verdandi. "An unending peace and prosperity for New Asgard, for Jotunheim!"

"Well, with some adventures, surely," Thor said. "If it's too peaceful it will get boring, and my daughter will never forgive me for that."

"Peace with adventures, then!" said Urd.

"Very well," Thor said, sighing. "But you three, you're getting the better end of this bargain. For Bilskirnir is so, so incredible. Although you'll have to give me a few hundred years, seven hundred years maybe, to clean out all the rooms."

" _Seven hundred years_?" said Verdandi.

"There are five hundred and forty rooms," Thor reminded her. "Five hundred and forty? Yes, I said that, didn't I. Five hundred and forty."

"You get five hundred and forty years, one for each room," Skuld said flatly. "And no more. In exchange for happiness for you and those you cherish, peace and good fortune for your nation and your beloved's, and some adventures thrown in. Final offer."

"I'll take it, but you're twisting my arm," said Thor.

Heimdall returned the bucket to the Norns after they'd shaken on it. Then he waved goodbye and walked away with Thor, their heads bent low together.

"It's high time you learned to make your own hall anyway," he told Thor. "Your mother can teach you that. And Loki will help. Took you long enough to get here, by the way."

"Why did I promise them five hundred and forty rooms?" Thor said, as it dawned on him just how magnificent Bilkskirnir would have to be. "I only came here to invite you to my wedding."

"You're only getting a wedding, and not a far, far worse fate, because you came here," Heimdall said. "From the moment I saw Loki again, I knew either chaos or great joy would follow, and the Norns have ever shown which option they prefer."

"Chaos _and_ great joy followed," Thor pointed out.

"Yes, well. It's Loki," Heimdall said.

"Wait, what was that you were saying about madness?" Thor asked now, as he replayed Heimdall's earlier conversation with the Norns. "The youngest babes? All that?"

"You'll have three more children, for a total of five. Which is madness," Heimdall said easily. "I advise you not to tell Loki. He'll find out soon enough."

"Yes, we discovered a few days ago that he's pregnant," Thor admitted. But then something occurred to him.

"Why are you not _surprised_ by me and Loki?" Thor asked Heimdall. "Has it always been so obvious? Even to you, Heimdall? Hela said as much, but I thought you perhaps, in your observatory, might not have noticed."

Heimdall clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm the All-Seeing, my king," he said. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I was the very _first_ to notice that, where Loki is concerned, you've always, always been a randy little weirdo."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all! Hope you enjoyed it. Comments and kudos are very much appreciated, if you're so inclined.


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